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

[Razade]

I regret to inform you all that Minecraft Steve has been officially announced for the Smash Bros. roster.


...That is all.

Fairly disappointed myself. I hope the remaining four characters aren't just throw-away "let's get more hype" types like Maserchief or someone from Overwatch. There's so many solid characters out there to pick from between games that ought to have representation from Nintendo (Like a Tales character) to solid smaller studios (Shantae). If Steve had been a Mii costume I'd have been fine with it. But as a full roster character...it's just uninspired and I've got the suspicion that we only got Banjo because Minecraft was tacked on to the agreement.

[Zevox]

Fairly disappointed myself. I hope the remaining four characters aren't just throw-away "let's get more hype" types like Maserchief or someone from Overwatch. There's so many solid characters out there to pick from between games that ought to have representation from Nintendo (Like a Tales character) to solid smaller studios (Shantae). If Steve had been a Mii costume I'd have been fine with it. But as a full roster character...it's just uninspired and I've got the suspicion that we only got Banjo because Minecraft was tacked on to the agreement.

Can't speak to Overwatch, but I'd actually be fairly cool with Master Chief. Doubt I'd buy him - I'm not an FPS fan and have never played a Halo game - but the prospect of getting the mascot of a rival console into Smash is a genuinely cool one just from the angle of it being a game that's become a celebration of gaming as a whole in Ultimate. Kind of like how part of the reason that Sonic getting added in Brawl was a big deal was because of his status as Sega's mascot from the days when they were Nintendo's console rival.

Hell, about the only new characters I can imagine that could possibly equal or top the addition of Cloud in Smash 4 for how much they'd amaze people are Master Chief and Kratos, specifically because of their status as the big poster boys of the X-Box and Playstation. And with Microsoft letting Banjo and Steve into Smash, Master Chief at least seems like he could be possible. Kratos is quite a bit more questionable, but I wouldn't completely rule him out, either.

[tonberrian]

I'm pretty sure that they're sticking to the rule that a character has to actually appear on a Nintendo console (Joker was in Persona Q 2 so it still counts). With Disgaea 6 being Switch exclusive (at least for non-Japan countries), I think there's at least SOME chance there's going to be a Disgaea character in Ultimate (though I'd rather have Laharl than the new protagonist - Laharl was in Disgaea DS). Still, apparently the sky's the limit!

[Zevox]

I'm pretty sure that they're sticking to the rule that a character has to actually appear on a Nintendo console (Joker was in Persona Q 2 so it still counts). With Disgaea 6 being Switch exclusive (at least for non-Japan countries), I think there's at least SOME chance there's going to be a Disgaea character in Ultimate (though I'd rather have Laharl than the new protagonist - Laharl was in Disgaea DS). Still, apparently the sky's the limit!

Eh, both Joker (Persona Q2 had literally come out in Japan just the week before he was announced for Smash) and Cloud at the time he was added (I think the only thing he'd been in on a Nintendo system at that time was Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories on the GBA?) make that quite a stretch. And in general the willingness to add characters like those two or Steve shows that they're very open to characters you wouldn't traditionally associate with Nintendo or expect in Smash.

The only rule I'd count on them sticking to at this point is that the character must be from a video game franchise. Well, and possibly that Assist Trophy characters won't also be playable, though I'm half expecting them to make an exception to that for Waluigi, given the stink that was raised over him around launch time.

I'd take Laharl as well, personally, quite like him. I wouldn't get any hopes up just because Disgaea 6 is a Switch game though, that doesn't necessarily mean anything in this regard.

[Dire_Flumph]

At this point I think just about any Smash Bros reveal will make people unhappy. But my son, who has been playing Minecraft since age 4 and still plays heavily, freaked when he saw the announcement. He'd been pulling for Steve to be included for months.

I don't normally buy games on release, but TIE Fighter remains my favorite game of all time and I plunked down for Star Wars: Squadrons not knowing what to expect. The Starfighter module of Battlegrounds II was kind of fun, but extremely shallow. So at best I was hoping to at least get a decent Rogue Squadron-ish follow up.

So far, even after just playing the intro TIE/X-Wing mission, it's exceeded expectations. It's pretty clear the game designers took a lot of inspiration from the old TIE/X-Wing games. While not quite as in-depth, at least things like power management and a somewhat better targeting system are back. I think my weekend has just been tied up getting into this one.

[warty goblin]

I continue to mess about in Naheulbeuk. I find its sense of humor quite amusing; even if one joke doesn't land the next is probably 90 seconds away, and most of them do elicit at least a chuckle. The combat is growing on me, the underlying RPG system is actually pretty well thought out, if extremely prone to RNG swinginess. Which, given the tone of the game, is almost certainly deliberate. I particularly appreciate that it stays relatively focused on standard attacks, rather than descending into a mire of tremendous numbers of extremely powerful special abilities. Which isn't to say the abilities aren't powerful, but they generally do less damage than a standard attack, and most of them take a -5% hit chance in the bargain, so you want to use them from advantageous positions, rather than willy-nilly. In compensation they usually do something like hit multiple enemies, or inflict some rather crippling debuff. Delightfully, the melee focused characters get at least as good of access to debuff abilities as the magic users, with such enjoyable options as knockdowns, stuns, damage over time, or damage-on-move. You can't spam them because they're rationed by both an endurance/mana system, and cooldowns, but when employed well they can really alter the flow of a fight.

I've read some reviews about how the game is nailbitingly hard, which I find very strange. I've had to restart a grand total of two fights in the 13+ hours I've played, and I'm pretty sure I could have beaten the first of them without reloading, although it would have been quite annoying. I rather suspect the shift from typical XCOM spread-out-and-hide tactics to melee line fighting might be throwing some people for a bit of a loop, but it's really pretty simple. Don't commit single melee fighters to offensive maneuvers, all the sword-boys fight in at least pairs. That, plus judicious use of terrain keeps people from stabbing you in the back too much. It's generally not worth exposing yourself to a flank attack in order to get a flank attack; which is why the buddy tactic is so key. Person 1 flanks, person 2 protects their flank.

[Anteros]

I've read some reviews about how the game is nailbitingly hard, which I find very strange. I've had to restart a grand total of two fights in the 13+ hours I've played, and I'm pretty sure I could have beaten the first of them without reloading, although it would have been quite annoying. I rather suspect the shift from typical XCOM spread-out-and-hide tactics to melee line fighting might be throwing some people for a bit of a loop, but it's really pretty simple. Don't commit single melee fighters to offensive maneuvers, all the sword-boys fight in at least pairs. That, plus judicious use of terrain keeps people from stabbing you in the back too much. It's generally not worth exposing yourself to a flank attack in order to get a flank attack; which is why the buddy tactic is so key. Person 1 flanks, person 2 protects their flank.

Well, there's a whole generation of gamers that have grown up on strategy games like Fire Emblem where every single one of your units can mow down entire armies, and losing even one of them is grounds for restarting. It's a huge shift from that to something where the enemy units are just as strong as yours and you have to use more advanced tactics than just holding a bottleneck while a dumb AI lemmings itself into your much superior units one at a time.

[Cespenar]

I've read some reviews about how the game is nailbitingly hard, which I find very strange. I've had to restart a grand total of two fights in the 13+ hours I've played, and I'm pretty sure I could have beaten the first of them without reloading, although it would have been quite annoying. I rather suspect the shift from typical XCOM spread-out-and-hide tactics to melee line fighting might be throwing some people for a bit of a loop, but it's really pretty simple. Don't commit single melee fighters to offensive maneuvers, all the sword-boys fight in at least pairs. That, plus judicious use of terrain keeps people from stabbing you in the back too much. It's generally not worth exposing yourself to a flank attack in order to get a flank attack; which is why the buddy tactic is so key. Person 1 flanks, person 2 protects their flank.

The internet is pretty unreliable in checking how other people are faring with a game's difficulty anyway. Go to the discussions of the most infamously hard games, and you'll find twice as many "it's in fact so easy that I walked my dog while beating it in the background" as "guys I can't really pass this level".

[Triaxx]

Plus different players have different specialties. I am a horrible shooter player but I'm awesome strategically.

[Anteros]

The internet is pretty unreliable in checking how other people are faring with a game's difficulty anyway. Go to the discussions of the most infamously hard games, and you'll find twice as many "it's in fact so easy that I walked my dog while beating it in the background" as "guys I can't really pass this level".

Plus no matter how difficult something is, there's always going to be "that guy" in every discussion bragging about how easy they found it.

[warty goblin]

Plus no matter how difficult something is, there's always going to be "that guy" in every discussion bragging about how easy they found it.

Not trying to be 'that guy' here, I'm honestly a bit flummoxed as to what's supposed to be particularly difficult about the game. Don't let your dudes get mobbed, don't stand next to the exploding barrels, keep the bad people away from the squishy back line, generally use the right character for the job. I could see it being pretty punishing on Hard, but, well, that's the point of Hard. It is fair to say the game is a lot less handholdy than one may be used to. For instance, all your attacks have a 3% critical failure chance, which can cause anything from damage, to falling over, to absolutely nothing at all. I'd also lay dollars to donuts that it hasn't pulled an XCOM and stealth altered the probabilities in your favor, simply because the occasional massive failures of your party are part of the joke.


Also, Star Wars Squadrons came out, and I have played the opening levels. I would rate it as... fine. Everything works well, there's a nice attention to detail - I particularly like that you actually use your ship's instrumentation for most things - and the controls feel pretty good. The graphics are good, everything sounds like Star Wars, it's all pretty solid. There's just, I donno, a certain vast fatigue with flying around in an X-Wing, again, shooting at TIE fighters, again. I like Star Wars, but at some point, don't we have enough Star Wars? Or at least enough of the same old Star Wars over and over and over and...

...oh wait. That would require Disney to have a coherent and original idea about what to do with Star Wars. So no. It'll be X-Wings until the sun burns out.

[Resileaf]

I'm playing X-Com 2 for the first time, and gotta say I love how powerful my squad feels right now. Finished beating all the Chosen, beat all but one of the alien rulers (the archon is ridiculously overpowered), beat the first summoned avatar (in the middle of fighting one of the Chosens no less), avatar progress bar is completely empty. Feeling pretty good about the continuation of the campaign.

[MCerberus]

Positive reviews... good word of mouth... force guide me I think I'm going to buy an EA game (Squadrons)

[PoeticallyPsyco]

Just beat an old strategy game called Braveland. Pretty simple, not a lot of advanced tactics to pull, but there's some fun to be had in positioning your guys and timing your turns so that the enemy is kept away from your back-line and all your melee dudes are in range to beat on them. Aside from a big difficulty spike in the middle, it was pretty easy, so I might go through again on Hard since it's a pretty short game anyway.

[MCerberus]

Squadrons tutorial level: The empire is properly imperial, and half-way through they switch you to the rebels where you have a full fleet action. Full flight control, with systems management. There are two major differences from the old days.

First is that there are consumables. Default loadout gives you missiles and a hull repair. You also have one of a flavor of anti-missile defenses on a cooldown. Internal systems are on cooldowns but lock-on weapons have ammo counts. Looking ahead at multiplayer it looks like you can actually double-up on utility or have two flavors of missiles if you choose.

Second is that power draw is how fast your shields/lasers charge. In the olden dayes you had to maintain equal power to keep your laser charge static and commonly cut engine power to "reload". At standard power to all systems your shields and lasers will charge, but you have the option to go to 0 power to a system.


Looking at the store, it looks like you earn unlock points by leveling up mostly. You earn a little bit of customization points as well, but it looks like the best way to get new paint jobs (or a gonk droid bobble head) at the end of the 60 day season where you get a ton of it based off of ranked tiers. Oh, and nowhere is this game asking me for more money. You physically cannot buy the tacky chrome-plated imperial pilot helmet with real world money. Also apparently the special forces of the new republic use pink.

[factotum]

Just completed Trails of Cold Steel. Falcom have this knack of putting characters in their games you care about and then putting them into cliffhanger situations at the end to force you to buy the next title--which I've already done, Cold Steel 2 and 3 were both ordered on Amazon a few minutes ago! (Not ordered 4 yet because its Western release is due next month and I do *not* pre-order games, it's a rule of mine).

My overall thoughts about the first game: I'm actually a little disappointed that they've introduced some aspects that appear to be overtly supernatural and/or magical into the series. In Trails in the Sky all "magic" was the result of the proverbial Sufficiently Advanced Technology, in the shape of "orbments", but this isn't the case in Cold Steel, at least not from what I've seen so far. I also clearly missed *loads* during my 70 hour playthrough, considering I ended on rank A2 (A0 would be best) and got B ranks for most months. The cast of characters was maybe a bit *too* large, meaning some people tended to get forgotten about and unused. All those are really minor quibbles, though, I had a good time with the game and I hope the next two instalments will continue that!

[oxybe]

So I saw the minecraft announcement and while I'm not particularly hyped about Steve (I have Ridley and Terry Bogart, I am happy on having my bois), the companion vid Sakurai brought out explaining his abilities makes him look like one of the most out there characters.

the flint, anvil drop, TNT (with or without pressure plate) and being able to build walls look to make Steve really good at edge guarding, and on first glance the elytra and mid-aid block placement looks like insane recovery. The mining for the necessary resources to do these shenanigans looks interesting, and at least in the more competitive modes there is a set pattern to the mining. Also... the minecart is like a projectile version of Space Pirate Rush. wat even.

While I'm not hyped about Steve in particular, he at least looks different and i'll give him a try.

[GloatingSwine]

Positive reviews... good word of mouth... force guide me I think I'm going to buy an EA game (Squadrons)

I might play it if it shows up on Game Pass.

But I'll still feel dirty downloading it.

[warty goblin]

I might play it if it shows up on Game Pass.

But I'll still feel dirty downloading it.

I messed about with it this weekend, and was left massively uninspired. It's a space dogfighting game, which means a lot of flying in tight little circles to chase the target indicator at the edge of the screen. Since the maximum gun range is literally 1km, expect to do this a lot. Occasionally you shoot a missile. Sometimes you have to attack a frigate or capital ship, which plays out pretty much the same. You can attack individual turrets, but because these are Star Wars ships and therefore designed by people who fail to grasp that fighters are a thing you might want to shoot at in a more than notational manner, there's hardly any point.

The flight model is painfully simple, and the ship management is pretty shallow. You have 4 power modes, balanced, bonus to lasers, bonus to engines, and bonus to shield, if the ship has them. So you fly in circles, and occassionally decide to fly in circles a bit faster.

Everything that is there is fine, there just isn't all that much of it. Maybe it improves later, at least in terms of mission design, but o can't see the fundamental flight model getting more engaging. It's hardly more complicated than original Battlefront 2, but without the sense of scale that had. For about the same price, you could play Rebel Galaxy Outlaw, which also didn't blow me away, but had a lot more going for it.

[Cespenar]

Just completed Trails of Cold Steel. Falcom have this knack of putting characters in their games you care about and then putting them into cliffhanger situations at the end to force you to buy the next title--which I've already done, Cold Steel 2 and 3 were both ordered on Amazon a few minutes ago! (Not ordered 4 yet because its Western release is due next month and I do *not* pre-order games, it's a rule of mine).

My overall thoughts about the first game: I'm actually a little disappointed that they've introduced some aspects that appear to be overtly supernatural and/or magical into the series. In Trails in the Sky all "magic" was the result of the proverbial Sufficiently Advanced Technology, in the shape of "orbments", but this isn't the case in Cold Steel, at least not from what I've seen so far. I also clearly missed *loads* during my 70 hour playthrough, considering I ended on rank A2 (A0 would be best) and got B ranks for most months. The cast of characters was maybe a bit *too* large, meaning some people tended to get forgotten about and unused. All those are really minor quibbles, though, I had a good time with the game and I hope the next two instalments will continue that!

Eh, needlessly large cast of party members is pretty much a staple for RPGs by now. At least in Trails they often find something to do for the people that you don't pick.

[factotum]

Eh, needlessly large cast of party members is pretty much a staple for RPGs by now. At least in Trails they often find something to do for the people that you don't pick.

I wouldn't say so--certainly, while Trails in the Sky probably had an equally large cast of characters, the game was quite clever at only allowing you access to a few of them at a time. In ToCS you have access to nearly everyone right from the get-go. I don't think I ever had Gaius in my main party after leaving the Nord Highlands, for instance, because there were simply better options available.

Anyway, the discs for 2 and 3 won't be arriving until tomorrow, so I have to find something else to do tonight, I guess!

[Kareeah_Indaga]

My Below Zero save got messed up so I started on We Happy Few. First impression is that the prologue is a bit cutscene-happy. Protagonist is also more chatty than I’m used to.

[Zevox]

I'm getting pretty late into Persona 4 Golden now - hit November just today. A few thoughts to throw out there:

- Goddamn, Dojima's voice actor is good. I'd forgotten just how much that contributes to how attached you get to him and Nanako, and how hard certain events hit.
- They made the fishing mini-game a lot harder. It used to be just a simple button-mashing game, IIRC - this thing where you need to keep the arrow centered while reeling is causing me a lot of trouble. I can't even always catch Huge Fish, I can't imagine how tough the Guardian will be. ...if I can even find more of the bugs needed to use as bait for him, given the only two I've acquired so far just got me Huge Fish instead. Which is another thing you didn't used to need to worry about.
- It feels like they made it a lot harder to rank up your social links. I've got a lot at rank 7 or so, but I'm nowhere near maxing as many as I recall doing even on my first time through the game. Both the addition of the Jester and Aeon links, plus more days spent on mandatory events makes a difference, obviously... but I also can't help but wonder if they just made some ranks require more points. It's been too long since I played the original to be sure, but I do not recall needing to spend so much extra time with so many links - some as early as rank 3! - despite using a guide to get as many points as possible per rank and always having a Persona of the appropriate type with me.
- Okina Station and the beach don't really seem to contribute much in the way of useful options, I don't find myself using them at all. They just seem like a waste of time when it's so tough to get your social links up. And money is so short that I haven't even considered buying outfits from the clothing store - though perhaps that's because of my insistence on keeping one Persona specialized in each combat option around (the six elements, physical, and healing), which does lead to me spending a lot on getting Personas back out of the Compendium.

Still loving the game overall, of course - it's all kinds of wonderful to revisit these characters and this story, especially after who-knows-how-many years since I last played the original. And many of the additions Golden made are good - the new social links, some of the new events (I liked Rise's mini-concert at Junes in particular), and of course the ability to pick which skills Personas inherit is a lifesaver - but yeah, not quite all of them.

[tonberrian]

I'm getting pretty late into Persona 4 Golden now - hit November just today. A few thoughts to throw out there:

- Goddamn, Dojima's voice actor is good. I'd forgotten just how much that contributes to how attached you get to him and Nanako, and how hard certain events hit.
- They made the fishing mini-game a lot harder. It used to be just a simple button-mashing game, IIRC - this thing where you need to keep the arrow centered while reeling is causing me a lot of trouble. I can't even always catch Huge Fish, I can't imagine how tough the Guardian will be. ...if I can even find more of the bugs needed to use as bait for him, given the only two I've acquired so far just got me Huge Fish instead. Which is another thing you didn't used to need to worry about.
- It feels like they made it a lot harder to rank up your social links. I've got a lot at rank 7 or so, but I'm nowhere near maxing as many as I recall doing even on my first time through the game. Both the addition of the Jester and Aeon links, plus more days spent on mandatory events makes a difference, obviously... but I also can't help but wonder if they just made some ranks require more points. It's been too long since I played the original to be sure, but I do not recall needing to spend so much extra time with so many links - some as early as rank 3! - despite using a guide to get as many points as possible per rank and always having a Persona of the appropriate type with me.
- Okina Station and the beach don't really seem to contribute much in the way of useful options, I don't find myself using them at all. They just seem like a waste of time when it's so tough to get your social links up. And money is so short that I haven't even considered buying outfits from the clothing store - though perhaps that's because of my insistence on keeping one Persona specialized in each combat option around (the six elements, physical, and healing), which does lead to me spending a lot on getting Personas back out of the Compendium.

Still loving the game overall, of course - it's all kinds of wonderful to revisit these characters and this story, especially after who-knows-how-many years since I last played the original. And many of the additions Golden made are good - the new social links, some of the new events (I liked Rise's mini-concert at Junes in particular), and of course the ability to pick which skills Personas inherit is a lifesaver - but yeah, not quite all of them.

One of the new locations lets you make skill cards, by taking certain personas to Okina City. You can get pretty much every skill this way, including ones like Heat Riser and Debilitate that aren't available in shuffle time.

[factotum]

I'm getting pretty late into Persona 4 Golden now - hit November just today.

I assume you're aware that you have to max out Aeon before you finish December's dungeon in order to unlock the extra Golden dungeon and the True Golden ending?

[Winthur]

I have allocated 110 hours into my Tales of Vesperia: Definitve Edition with a friend with whom I play over Steam Remote Play (which works great, actually). I played as blindly as possible and I don't think I got everything I could have gotten, but I'm finally going after the final boss of the final act into his final dungeon. (No spoilers!)

The game is really quite terrific and I'll probably end up binging on a lot of Tales games in the future. Which might be devastating to my plans to beat the rest of the stuff in my backlog, like Persona 4 Golden :P

[Clertar]

Kingdom Come: Deliverance. I had played a few hours about a year ago, and now with more time on my hands I plan to play it seriously.

Between this, Larian and CD Project there is we are in the middle of a very interesting shift to central European producers of fantasy CRPGs.

[Narkis]

Between this, Larian and CD Project there is we are in the middle of a very interesting shift to central European producers of fantasy CRPGs.

I'd add Owlcat to that list, but yeah European RPGs have been at their peak for the past few years.

[factotum]

The game is really quite terrific and I'll probably end up binging on a lot of Tales games in the future. Which might be devastating to my plans to beat the rest of the stuff in my backlog, like Persona 4 Golden :P

Trails of Cold Steel is doing that for me right now--I only just finished the first game, another three to go, and they're all 60+ hour monsters!

[Cespenar]

I'm getting pretty late into Persona 4 Golden now - hit November just today. A few thoughts to throw out there:

- Goddamn, Dojima's voice actor is good. I'd forgotten just how much that contributes to how attached you get to him and Nanako, and how hard certain events hit.

Most of the VAs are pretty good, but Dojima's is especially so, yeah. It's interesting that the difference of quality is so real that people are preferring to play it in a language that they don't know.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance. I had played a few hours about a year ago, and now with more time on my hands I plan to play it seriously.

Between this, Larian and CD Project there is we are in the middle of a very interesting shift to central European producers of fantasy CRPGs.

Kingdom Come is pretty good, yeah. I was almost about to say underrated, until I saw the Steam page.

About European producers, I wouldn't say "shift", though, per se, at least for now. Those all have pretty few titles under their belts so far, but I hope that will change with time.