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  1. - Top - End - #181
    Librarian in the Playground Moderator
     
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    Default Re: What Are You Playing, Part 3: The Assassination of my Wallet by the Cowardly Sale

    Dove headfirst into Pathfinder: Kingmaker. A pretty good Baldur's Gate-Like game using Pathfinder rules and game world. I'm having fun, and finally got my barony settled, with a minimum of off-line help.

    I find a couple things frustrating about it (aside from the usual things which are why I don't play Pathfinder on tabletop).

    1) nowhere in game to look things up. Like, what do I need for two-weapon fighting? I had to start over and make an entirely new character to find that out, because there's not much opportunity to just peruse game information outside of character creation. yes, wikis and such are available, but it annoys me, nonetheless.

    2) So, let's say you've played through the early game a couple of times, finding your feet. You start yet another game, and decide "Hey, I don't need tutorials." Then you get to the kingdom section.. and there's NOTHING.

    3) Most of the portraits are pretty bad. You can't zoom in while fine-tuning your paper doll to see what you look like. I am old, my eyes are bad, let me zoom.
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  2. - Top - End - #182
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    Default Re: What Are You Playing, Part 3: The Assassination of my Wallet by the Cowardly Sale

    Started a new game of Civ 6. Once again discovering I am horrible at being aggressive in Civilization games. I even deliberately chose Alexander, who is pretty much entirely aggression-focused, and still keep saying "Oh, but I need this one more thing for my city, then I'll start building up a decent military!"

    I've been trying to bait the AI into attacking, but they haven't yet.

  3. - Top - End - #183
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    Default Re: What Are You Playing, Part 3: The Assassination of my Wallet by the Cowardly Sale

    Quote Originally Posted by Mark Hall View Post
    Dove headfirst into Pathfinder: Kingmaker. A pretty good Baldur's Gate-Like game using Pathfinder rules and game world. I'm having fun, and finally got my barony settled, with a minimum of off-line help.

    I find a couple things frustrating about it (aside from the usual things which are why I don't play Pathfinder on tabletop).

    1) nowhere in game to look things up. Like, what do I need for two-weapon fighting? I had to start over and make an entirely new character to find that out, because there's not much opportunity to just peruse game information outside of character creation. yes, wikis and such are available, but it annoys me, nonetheless.

    2) So, let's say you've played through the early game a couple of times, finding your feet. You start yet another game, and decide "Hey, I don't need tutorials." Then you get to the kingdom section.. and there's NOTHING.

    3) Most of the portraits are pretty bad. You can't zoom in while fine-tuning your paper doll to see what you look like. I am old, my eyes are bad, let me zoom.
    If you haven't tried it, the turn-based mod turns it into an absurdly close-to-TT experience (I turned it on after going "this is basically TBS already with a thin veneer of RTS" and never looked back.)



    Had a go at Imperial Galactica 2 last night, in my endless search for Does Starships Better Than SotS.

    Eh. It - very much like Space Emipires V - makes something on an effort to have ground combat, but it's more or less mono unit and very flat. The starship designs is also basically just a choice of "upgrade to guns you have2 with a couple of mnor choices (such as on the bigger ships, torpedoes or shields), but that's about it. I'll finish the game, but it's not wowing me.

    The Search Continues.

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    The very best:
    Sword of the Stars 1: Still the gold standard in starship design and combat, argueably the best way to apprroach research; but an aging interface and very bare-bones non-starship combat bits and can sometimes be very frustrating due to RNG. No ground combat at all, even attempted.
    Stellaris: Better than Sword of the Stars 1 in every respect EXCEPT for starship design/combat; while the combat is better than the usual PDX GSG "two balls of numbers happen" it's still not very good, and the ship design system is still very shallow. Balls-of-numbers ground combat. And despite it all, my last playthrough of Stellaris kept making me go "I need to play SotS again after this."

    The other best (In no particular order):
    Sword of the Stars 2: Better than SotS in a couple of respectes, but very buggy and incomplete and you spend way too much time arsing about with space station upgrades. No ground combat at all, even attempted. But, of the games I have times logged for (SotS 1 is not on Steam), until I discovered PDX, had the highest logged time of any of my games, which isn't bad considering I bought it for, like, £3.
    Star Wars: Empire at War: Managed good starship combat and the single best rendition of ground combat of anhy of the starship game to date. But, its Star Wars, so no ship design.
    Master of Orion 3: Good ship design system, actually big and expansive enough that you can't do "tech-up until end-game," but the combat is a little bit bland (though it has a slightly better feel, to me, than some of the others of this ilk with arguably better graphics and small scale). Almost toob expansive for its own good. Music is paff (though no starship game I have yet encountered actually has GOOD music, sadly; nothing that sticks in my head longer than when the game is running, anyway). Balls-of-numbers ground combat, but at least where you can make a spirited attempt at a rock-paper-scissors tactics choice (so you have SOME input) and ground combat isn't over-and-done in one go.

    The rest (in approximate order of being tried over the years):
    Sins of a Solar Empire: No ship design, functional but only okay out-of-combat stuff; always felt it needed a story campaign, because otherwise I never found it had anything that held my attention.
    Galactic Civilisations 1 & 2: Okay out-of-combat stuff (but now massively eclipsed by Stellaris, though), but again, combat is balls-of-numbers and the starship design is all aethetics, but little substance. And my enduing memory is always fracking about with tedious constructors and starbases. Not bothered to look into the 3rd installement.
    Master of Orion 2: I played one game of this, I know, but couldn't tell you thing one about it, which shows how much impact this oft-heralded-classic had on me. Yes, that I think MoO3 is better (patched up to the heck, granted) is heresy.
    Gratuitous Space Battles: Pretty starship battles, but getting basically everything at once meant that the various weapon systems were not clearly defined differences (e.g. between the big beams), no control, and there's nothing else to it.
    Space Empires V: Good starship design, pretty good out-of-combat stuff, but again, RTS starship combat is mostly just "move blob to other blob" and ground combat, while present is also very flat and more or less monounit.
    Star Ruler 2: Slightly novel starship design, but otherwise mediocre. (Can't remeber if there was ground combat.)
    AI War: No starship design or ground combat (though hero-ships get some design), but the tactical combat is much cleverer (the game's AI is clever enough that it doesn't need micromanagement to the same level, because it's smart enough to having kiting as a full-on tactic. And there is base-building, functionally. Lots of engaging decision-making and planning. Pretty much unique in its approach, and probably one of the better entries; I likely will go back for at last a second game (and try Endless Spire) at some point (before I play the sequel). Problem tends to be you spend all you time zoomed out looking at the icons, not the ship graphics (aka the Supreme Commande Problem.)
    Master of Orion (the new one): Also forgetable.
    Endless Space 2: Played one game of it, didn't grab me. Higher production values than most of the rest, but again, starship combat is mediocre (no control, as I recall). (Can't even remember if there was ground combat, but don't think so; if there was, clearly didn't grab me.)
    Polaris Sector: Very much enjoyed the novel ship design (and I recall the write-up of humans was HILARIOUS), but everything else is mediocre and the actual starship combat, despite being RTS, is again very flat. Don't remember the ground combat, but I think it was present, so it was probably ball-of-numbers.
    Imperium Galactica 2: Very middle of the road in all aspects. Ground combat RTs is present, but basically monounit and flat.



    On the fringes (no particular order):
    Star Trek Armada 1&2: Okay, I guess. I think 1 was arguably better than 2, whuich seemed to be set so the combat happened too fast.
    Homeworld 1/2 (Remastered Version): Good story, adquate starship combat, but never finished my playthrough of the second game because the saves on one mission (where it was "if you make a mistake, you are instantly screwed") was bugged so that if you reloaded, you were screwed.
    Nexus Incident: Great game, excellent story, good starship combat, but it IS just the story campaign. Depressing it never got the sequel.


    Not tried/discarded:
    AI War 2: Expecting largely the same as AI War 1; kickstarted it, waiting until it's a bit more "done." It's not going anywhere, and they had my pennies from the start, so...

    Aurura 4X: Doesn't have graphics. I want to see my starship battles, dammit. I know, I know, I'm being shallow, but it is what it is. But yeah, getting the lich who designs starships for an unliving to play a game (that is probably quite good, by all accounts) without seeing his pretty starship battles is kind of a big ask. (Also why I have never tried more than a cursory attempt at Dwarf Fortress, yes even with the graphics patches.)
    Distant Star Universe: Don't like the looks of the top-down aesthetics, to be honest, nor did what I have seen from the starships shooting at each other make me think it looked particularly tactically interesting.



    At this point, I think I nearly need Creative Assmebly to do "Total War In SPAAAAAACE" to get something of an improvement. Something done in that style (well, at least TWWH-style) with space battles as well as ground-combat would probably work quite well.

    (The theorhetical standard of perfection would be something like "Stellaris-level out-of-combat (whether TBS or real-time), with SotS 1/2-level starship design and combat, married to Empire at War or better ground-battles (if RTS tactical) or any real credible attempt to do a better abstraction that involves actual stragegic positioning.")




    Edit: On consideration, attempt at humour on Aurora 4X comment came across as churlish, given that is one gentleman's explicit hobby that he distributes for free to the internet, which I cannot fault on any level. Revised wording accordingly.
    Last edited by Aotrs Commander; 2020-06-06 at 06:37 AM.

  4. - Top - End - #184
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    BlackDragon

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

    GalCiv3 has definitely improved the starbase thing, Aotrs Commander--you still have them, but they've streamlined the process of upgrading them massively. Ship construction is still purely cosmetic, though, you can put engines and guns wherever you like and it doesn't affect the capability of the ship at all.

  5. - Top - End - #185
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    OldWizardGuy

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

    Aotrs Commander -

    I actually found Pax Imperia: Eminent Domain fun back in the day, but I think I'm a minority opinion on that one.

    It's under $2 right now on GOG if you want to try it.
    Last edited by Sermil; 2020-06-06 at 04:33 PM.

  6. - Top - End - #186
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    Default Re: What Are You Playing, Part 3: The Assassination of my Wallet by the Cowardly Sale

    Quote Originally Posted by Sermil View Post
    Started a new game of Civ 6. Once again discovering I am horrible at being aggressive in Civilization games. I even deliberately chose Alexander, who is pretty much entirely aggression-focused, and still keep saying "Oh, but I need this one more thing for my city, then I'll start building up a decent military!"

    I've been trying to bait the AI into attacking, but they haven't yet.
    I found that I just don't think the combat in Civ6 is that good, so it makes it very hard to be aggressive because it isn't fun. What I have found is effective is just to rush airplanes as fast as possible and bomb everything into submission, I can often take out cities' defenses faster than I can get people there to capture them.

    Quote Originally Posted by Aotrs Commander View Post
    If you haven't tried it, the turn-based mod turns it into an absurdly close-to-TT experience (I turned it on after going "this is basically TBS already with a thin veneer of RTS" and never looked back.)
    I have found that to be the case with everything that is real-time-with pause style "we're trying to be turn based and real time at the same time." It was a bad design 20 years ago when they started trying it and it hasn't gotten any better.
    It seems like the last few years the industry has finally started to accept that turn-based can be good and not everything has to be real-time.



    I've been slowly playing Gears Tactics and dipped into Minecraft Dungeons a little bit. But considering that game time per week has been a few hours at most, I really just haven't made much progress. I think Minecraft Dungeons would be a lot better with more players but I don't have anyone to play with and with my rare play time I haven't tried to organize anything with friends or on forums.

  7. - Top - End - #187
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    OldWizardGuy

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

    Quote Originally Posted by Erloas View Post
    I found that I just don't think the combat in Civ6 is that good, so it makes it very hard to be aggressive because it isn't fun. What I have found is effective is just to rush airplanes as fast as possible and bomb everything into submission, I can often take out cities' defenses faster than I can get people there to capture them.
    Well, I'm still in Medieval / early Renaissance, so rushing airplanes isn't an option quite yet. And Alexander's specials are so combat focused that I really need to be attacking if I want to win tech races.

    But, stepping back, I've generally had that problem with every Civ game. I just want to tend my garden of cities, and can't bring myself to focus on military. But that means (a) I get bored because most of my games tend to follow the same path and (b) when I do want / need to go to war, I'm really bad at it and have no sense of what strength I need to capture a city or what units work well in what circumstances.

  8. - Top - End - #188
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    Default Re: What Are You Playing, Part 3: The Assassination of my Wallet by the Cowardly Sale

    Quote Originally Posted by Erloas View Post
    I found that I just don't think the combat in Civ6 is that good, so it makes it very hard to be aggressive because it isn't fun. What I have found is effective is just to rush airplanes as fast as possible and bomb everything into submission, I can often take out cities' defenses faster than I can get people there to capture them.
    Question: was the combat in a Civ game every actually, you know, good? Stacks of Doom was unspectacular but mostly functional. But the 1UPT Civs have always been kinda bad. I actually quite like 1UPT hex-based wargames (witness my raving about Gladius, or my continued partisanship for Warlock: Master of the Arcane) but the Civ version has never felt like an actually good implementation of the concept. The most obvious problem is that the AI achieves a level of military incompetency seldom seen outside of a few of history's more snigger-inducing battles, but I think the issue is more fundamental. Basically a 1UPT hexgame is a rich and complete enough concept on its own that you can build an entire game around only the combat and a moderate to very light strategic layer for context. And when the combat is the focus, it's very satisfying, because moving the units and solving all the little tactical puzzles it creates is complex and rewarding. But in Civ a lot of the time you won't be fighting, yet you still need to deal with building and upgrading and leveling up all these little units all over the place. It's about 70% of the busywork, but most of the time there's no payoff for it. And when you do fight, the AI is spastic, or you've got a large tech advantage and can just steamroller everything anyway, making the infrequent reward for all that busywork rather... unrewarding.


    I have found that to be the case with everything that is real-time-with pause style "we're trying to be turn based and real time at the same time." It was a bad design 20 years ago when they started trying it and it hasn't gotten any better.
    It seems like the last few years the industry has finally started to accept that turn-based can be good and not everything has to be real-time.
    I have liked a couple games that were RTP, mostly in spite of being RTP. I think one of the downsides is that it makes a certain sort of trash fight very fast, so the game can throw a lot of trash fights at you in the name of MOAR CONTENT. Now while I don't want every single fight in the game to be a tremendous challenge, the last thing I want is more autopilot trash mob fights. But outside of that RTP usually just turns into "it's turn based, but way less elegant" because you have to pause and micromanage everything all the time anyway.

    I've been slowly playing Gears Tactics and dipped into Minecraft Dungeons a little bit. But considering that game time per week has been a few hours at most, I really just haven't made much progress. I think Minecraft Dungeons would be a lot better with more players but I don't have anyone to play with and with my rare play time I haven't tried to organize anything with friends or on forums.
    Gears is very nice in small doses. I'm rather fond of running a mission over breakfast on the weekends.
    Blood-red were his spurs i' the golden noon; wine-red was his velvet coat,
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    Down like a dog on the highway,
    And he lay in his blood on the highway, with the bunch of lace at his throat.


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  9. - Top - End - #189
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    Default Re: What Are You Playing, Part 3: The Assassination of my Wallet by the Cowardly Sale

    Quote Originally Posted by Mark Hall View Post
    Dove headfirst into Pathfinder: Kingmaker. A pretty good Baldur's Gate-Like game using Pathfinder rules and game world. I'm having fun, and finally got my barony settled, with a minimum of off-line help.

    I find a couple things frustrating about it (aside from the usual things which are why I don't play Pathfinder on tabletop).

    1) nowhere in game to look things up. Like, what do I need for two-weapon fighting? I had to start over and make an entirely new character to find that out, because there's not much opportunity to just peruse game information outside of character creation. yes, wikis and such are available, but it annoys me, nonetheless.
    I think the devs have explicitly stated somewhere that they basically expect people to use the d20pfsrd site for stuff like this. It's...kind of funny, at least to me.

    Quote Originally Posted by Mark Hall View Post

    3) Most of the portraits are pretty bad. You can't zoom in while fine-tuning your paper doll to see what you look like. I am old, my eyes are bad, let me zoom.
    You can actually upload your own portraits BTW. Or do you mean the character models?

  10. - Top - End - #190
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    Default Re: What Are You Playing, Part 3: The Assassination of my Wallet by the Cowardly Sale

    I'm trying the new Legendary Lord the Warden in Total Warhammer 2, and I really just don't like the way the campaign is set up. Mostly this has to do with the old "Green tide" problem. Right now the dwarves seem to be losing their matchup in the mountains, and you're pretty much pressured into going for the neck of the two orc factions in the badlands leading to you being the target of 2-3 of the main greenskin factions. With the new Wargh! mechanic.

    On top of that you need to use an in-battle spell to capture agents and lords so you very rarely are able to auto-resolve
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  11. - Top - End - #191
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    Default Re: What Are You Playing, Part 3: The Assassination of my Wallet by the Cowardly Sale

    Quote Originally Posted by Sermil View Post
    Well, I'm still in Medieval / early Renaissance, so rushing airplanes isn't an option quite yet. And Alexander's specials are so combat focused that I really need to be attacking if I want to win tech races.

    But, stepping back, I've generally had that problem with every Civ game. I just want to tend my garden of cities, and can't bring myself to focus on military. But that means (a) I get bored because most of my games tend to follow the same path and (b) when I do want / need to go to war, I'm really bad at it and have no sense of what strength I need to capture a city or what units work well in what circumstances.
    If you have a pretty good production base, why try to ascertain what amounts to a "proper military"? Just produce a lot of units, and if you overdo it, well, that's just investment for your next invasion.

    You really can't learn the combat mechanics if you don't use them, after all.

  12. - Top - End - #192
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    Default Re: What Are You Playing, Part 3: The Assassination of my Wallet by the Cowardly Sale

    Quote Originally Posted by Rynjin View Post
    You can actually upload your own portraits BTW. Or do you mean the character models?
    Both. I combined the two complaints a bit.
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  13. - Top - End - #193
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    Default Re: What Are You Playing, Part 3: The Assassination of my Wallet by the Cowardly Sale

    Quote Originally Posted by Mark Hall View Post
    Both. I combined the two complaints a bit.
    I agree about the portraits. Couldn't find anything that I thought would fit my main character, so I took a portrait from Icewind Dale and used this site to bring it to the proper size. After that it was just a matter of pasting the images to the proper folder, and the game points you to that from the in-game portrait browser.
    Many thanks to Assassin 89 for this avatar!

  14. - Top - End - #194
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    Default Re: What Are You Playing, Part 3: The Assassination of my Wallet by the Cowardly Sale

    Quote Originally Posted by MCerberus View Post
    I'm trying the new Legendary Lord the Warden in Total Warhammer 2, and I really just don't like the way the campaign is set up. Mostly this has to do with the old "Green tide" problem. Right now the dwarves seem to be losing their matchup in the mountains, and you're pretty much pressured into going for the neck of the two orc factions in the badlands leading to you being the target of 2-3 of the main greenskin factions. With the new Wargh! mechanic.

    On top of that you need to use an in-battle spell to capture agents and lords so you very rarely are able to auto-resolve
    The game has become much harder for the order factions in this patch. Vampire Counts and Skaven particularly have eaten all their wheaties and done their training montages and are ready to kick ass and take names.

    (Greenskins too, but they usually get eaten by rats, at least in the south on Mortal Empires)

  15. - Top - End - #195
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    Default Re: What Are You Playing, Part 3: The Assassination of my Wallet by the Cowardly Sale

    Huh. So I picked through Imperium Galactica 2 for most of the day, hitting the top and working my way through the AI, finding one of the four story crystals (two remaining), pottered on for a bit and... Just sudden got a "you win!" screen, for no readily apparent reason. No idea, maybe all the other empires surrendered or something. No option to continue, no statistics (though at least the "you win" was a cutscene and not just a static image, SotS, lookin' at you).

    *shrug*

    Okay, then. Eh, it killed 10 hours.

    I think, though, that kind of says it all. Ten hours, and I hit the top of the tech tree, my early-stage planets were at the point I was at the "might as well build defences, nothing else apart from manufacturing plants I can build and there's no point it making those when it's better concentrated onto the 200/250% prodyction worlds." So I've basically seen everything there was to see. I don't feel like there is any need to play the other races or the other two story campaigns (since the win conditions are apparently not tied to the story...) But that's rather short; most of the other 4X were at least 2-3 times that.

    There's no real decision making (I mean, maxed-out the tech tree in ten hours...) until right at the top of the tech tree, since it has this thing where the smaller ships and tanks can only be fitted with more primitive systems (the laser guns and main guns being the sole exception). And those two systems are a straight progression. Maybe there's some depth in the diplomacy system (thought I doubt it), but as typical, I rarely bother with that beyond the basic.

    There was a very small bit of depth in the ground combat, right at the end, when you had all the modules, it was worht building more than one type of tank so you could have the air strike module and the laser strike module, but that was about it. Still no real tactics in any of it, aside from "click on each enemy in turn."

    So. Eh. It was an inoffensive ten hours. It's not BAD game or anything, it's just not a lot to it, and nothing to reallty raise it above the crowd. I'll say this; it has slightly above average presentation, in that the music is a bit more jolly than, sya MoO3 or SotS, and there's some attempt at immersion through some cutscenes (which I appreciate, and always have since Civ II, even if they are clunky).

    I salute the attempt, but (as is often the case) I think it's a bit ambitious to what it can actually achieve; it's functional, but shallow.


    Whelp, now the difficult decision as to what to play next...!

  16. - Top - End - #196
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    Default Re: What Are You Playing, Part 3: The Assassination of my Wallet by the Cowardly Sale

    I'm nearing the (original) end of Persona 5 Royal, now. December, just completed what was originally the final Palace.
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    So, I'll start with the big twists of Sae Niijima's Palace. Honestly, they're extremely well-executed - every question you could have with what happened how and when to lead to that outcome is answered, and it's pretty amazing to see how it all comes together. And hey, if they wanted to make you emotionally invested in taking down Akechi, goddamn is it effective at that, because it makes you hate that smug, murderous bastard.

    But at the same time, I have to talk about Akechi... he is, in my opinion, the single biggest case of wasted potential in the game. When I first encountered him when first playing the game, I thought he was likely to be one of my favorite characters in the game, if not the series. Here was an well-meaning but intelligent character raising legitimate concerns and criticisms about what you're doing as the Phantom Thieves, which your group even seems to take pause over at first. And hey, he's on the game's cover art alongside the rest of the team, so presumably there will have to come a time when you and he will need to reconcile your differences, and the game will therefore address those concerns. And at first, when you get to Sae's Palace, it seems like that might just be about to happen. ...and then you get the reveal that no, Akechi is just very evil. He's the culprit behind the mental shutdowns/breakdowns. He's the one who murdered Haru's father after your group changed his heart. And he was only ever manipulating you into a trap with the intent of murdering Joker and making it look like a suicide. That, in itself, was such a letdown.

    But then you meet up with him again in Shido's Palace, and oh lord. He's not just an evil, murderous villain, he goes straight-up psychotic, laughing like the Joker (DC's Clown Prince of Crime one) and cackling about he's going to kill you all. And the game really didn't need that - Akechi as an evil mastermind at least had some value, as much as it lost by reneging on the seeming promise of making the team confront his legitimate concerns about their methods; Akechi as a psychopath just cheapens him. And then they try to make you sympathize with him over the crappy life he'd had due to being the son of Shido and a prostitute, and his resulting daddy issues, but I am having none of that. He's an unrepentant mass murderer who killed one of my teammates' father and almost killed me, I do not care about how bad his childhood was. The one thing I found myself agreeing with him about at that point was that the team was stupid to be trying to offer to let him come with them - I remember that the first time around I was thinking that the game could straight-up lose me if that actually happened at that point, and I'm sure that the only reason I was more okay this time around is the knowledge that it doesn't. Akechi, thankfully, dies there. A much worse end to the character than I'd wanted, but the only one he deserved after everything the game ultimately did with him.

    As for Shido, I recall feeling disappointed by him the first time around, but I will say that he did feel better to me this time. I can't pinpoint a reason, but I did get more satisfaction out of the buildup to taking him down and how it ultimately goes down than I did the first time I played. Still, I can't help but feel like he should have been more than he is. I think he probably spends a little too long in the background, and ends up feeling overshadowed by Akechi when he finally comes to the forefront of things after Sae's Palace. Despite being happier with his execution this time, there's no denying that I was far more emotionally invested in the final confrontation with Akechi than I was with Shido, and given Shido is the villain responsible for Joker's conviction on false charges and the guy that the game has been building up to since almost the beginning, he really should loom larger than he does there. You just don't achieve the same level of emotional connection with taking him down that you do with Kamoshida and Madarame in the early game, and if anyone should rival them in how much you want to take him out, it should be Shido.

    Also, on a gameplay note, I have to say that I feel like the game's boss design for the Palace bosses went downhill after the first few. Kamoshida and especially Madarame were great; Kaneshiro is just sort of a slugfest in his first phase, but he's the first such boss fight in the game so that's okay, and the second phase is a little more interesting; but after that... eh. Cognitive Wakaba is just kind of meh (and easy after Futaba Awakens and starts reflecting her big attack back at her automatically). Okumura has a theoretically interesting and thematic gimmick, sending wave after wave of minions at you until he runs out and is then a complete pushover himself, but it drags on too long, the need to wipe out everyone in a wave in the same turn to prevent him from respawning them all gets annoying with the later (higher-health) waves, and the self-destructs that last couple are capable of can KO you outright and force you to re-do the whole fight, making it exponentially more tedious. Good idea in theory, execution needed some work. But that's at least more than I can say for Sae and Shido. Sae has that gimmick of figuring out how she's cheating and disrupting it at first, which is neat, but as soon as you do it becomes a straight-up slugfest from start to finish, and then Shido is nothing but a bunch of phases of straight-up slugfest. Sure, Shido's final phase should probably have been a slugfest like that, given his status as the big boss the game has built up to like that, but come on, do something more interesting with the earlier phases!

    So, yeah, game's still really damn good on the whole, but I can see those weaknesses that made me feel like the latter parts weren't as good as the first half when I played it before, and playing it a second time hasn't changed my thoughts on that too much. On the upside, I've finished all of the social links with time to spare this time - first time around I missed finishing the last few ranks of Chihaya (the fortune teller/Fortune Arcana), and possibly Shinya (the gamer kid/Tower Arcana), can't remember for sure on him. Despite the addition of Kasumi, Maruki, and making Akechi's link mostly manual instead of automatic, still managed it this time, so yay for not missing anything! Just the bottom of Mementos to go, and then I'll see what the new extra semester is all about. Here's hoping that's good.
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    "When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty, I read them openly. When I became a man, I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up." -C.S. Lewis

  17. - Top - End - #197
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    Default Re: What Are You Playing, Part 3: The Assassination of my Wallet by the Cowardly Sale

    After having finished Pathfinder Kingmaker* I'm a bit undecisive. I really would like to start a Warhammer Total War campaign with Luthor Harkon, but the game is currently in a rather buggy state. It's best to wait for a patch to sort this out.

    Until then I'm bouncing between
    - my Medieval2 TW: Broken Crescent Omani campaign
    - Halo 2
    - Ghost of a Tale

    Bouncing between games is not a state I'm particular comfortable with. Hmm, maybe I should take a break from gaming for a couple of weeks...

    *Kingmaker was quite exellent, in a cozy-comfort zone kind of way. It was also really long. To give you an impression: GoG clocked 100 hours more then it did for Witcher 3! Granted, my 260h Witcher 3 are almost pure game time, while the 360h hours Kingmaker include a large amount (like 30-40 hours) idle time, but still.

  18. - Top - End - #198
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    Default Re: What Are You Playing, Part 3: The Assassination of my Wallet by the Cowardly Sale

    Started playing Barotrauma with two friends. (And usually two bots). It's a lot of fun. I'd describe it as "more casual, less whacky Space Station 13". Given how much I love Space Station 13, that's not bad. For starters, I still need a Wiki to play SS13 after 5+ years of regular play. You are a submarine crew on the monster-infested oceans of the ice moon Europa, trying to dive for salvage or alien artefacts. Traitors onboard optional.

    Using starter ships with small crew (we didn't want crews of mostly bots, the bots are pretty bad), we ended up crashing, drowning, burning, shooting each other and eaten by monsters and it was great, overall. Especially that time where I found the alien artefact, but ran out of air trying to drag it back to the submarine, so one of my friends had to start shuttling fresh air bottles through the labyrinthine ruins I was diving in, while the other one had to divide his time between manning the submarine's cannons and coming out to deal with monsters up close with harpoon gun when they tried to get into the ruin and eat the one carrying the air bottles. In the end, they had to carry my unconscious body out, but we all survived.
    Resident Vancian Apologist

  19. - Top - End - #199
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    Default Re: What Are You Playing, Part 3: The Assassination of my Wallet by the Cowardly Sale

    Quote Originally Posted by Sermil View Post
    Aotrs Commander -

    I actually found Pax Imperia: Eminent Domain fun back in the day, but I think I'm a minority opinion on that one.

    It's under $2 right now on GOG if you want to try it.
    I'll second Pax Imperia. I usually spend 75+% of my time in the spaceship building minigame, leaving the 4X stuff on the side (except to research new ship tech). Honestly, my dream game is Empire at War with a Pax Imperia-style ship building system (and revamped ground battles, which are easily the worst part of the EaW games).

    As for games I'm playing, I'm slowly making my way through Fire Emblem: New Mystery of the Emblem (i.e. FE12), a Japanese-only DS entry in the series. I'm about 2/3rds of the way through the game (chapter 17) and I'm not entirely sure how I feel about it. Story-wise it's incredibly forgettable, while the gameplay is generally better than the previous entry in the series (Shadow Dragon). However, almost every chapter consists of 4ish turns of barely surviving a few waves of super strong enemies (even the tankiest units I have rarely survive two hits and dodging is very unreliable) until basically every enemy on the map is dead, having committed suicide by main character and friends, followed by 15 turns of Marth running around to open chests while the rest of the party sit in a circle around the throne. The chapters where this doesn't occur are arguably worse because they still have the first 4 turns of frantic survival but also involve enemies that spawn on the enemy turn and then immediately charge me with their 10-12 movement (on maps that are around 25 tiles on a side) and/or clusters of enemies that refuse to move until you either attack them or place a unit in range of the entire group (which ends with your unit usually dying due to the enemy strength). Some of these problems are correctable on my part by using a guide and knowing how to manipulate the enemy AI, but it is still rather annoying.

    Switching genres, I'm almost finished with a level one critical mode run of KH3 (the base game). The only thing left to do is defeat the secret boss (I've figured out the patterns for the first two phases but the third phase is going slowly because mistakes immediately kill you in the third phase and I'm too greedy/impatient during the first/second phases to reliably get back to the third phase) and then it's off to the DLC (which I haven't played before). Much like my original playthrough (also on critical, though not at level one), the first ~30 hours are the painful price you pay to experience the last 5 hours: a fantastic series of great boss fights. While I don't expect this to happen, I really wish that Square Enix would change the gameplay to just a string of human-sized boss fights, which are the best parts of the series. I'd also accept SE just copying most of the mechanics from the series and creating a new IP to use them in.
    Last edited by Battleship789; 2020-06-08 at 07:22 AM.
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  20. - Top - End - #200
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    Default Re: What Are You Playing, Part 3: The Assassination of my Wallet by the Cowardly Sale

    @aotrscommander

    I'm surprised you didn't like moo2; I found it to have the most interesting and complex ship design system of any of the space games I've played; lots of interesting things to try and tactics to use.
    A neat custom class for 3.5 system
    http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=94616

    A good set of benchmarks for PF/3.5
    https://rpgwillikers.wordpress.com/2...y-the-numbers/

    An alternate craft point system I made for 3.5
    http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showt...t-Point-system

  21. - Top - End - #201
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    Default Re: What Are You Playing, Part 3: The Assassination of my Wallet by the Cowardly Sale

    Quote Originally Posted by Sermil View Post
    Aotrs Commander -

    I actually found Pax Imperia: Eminent Domain fun back in the day, but I think I'm a minority opinion on that one.

    It's under $2 right now on GOG if you want to try it.
    Quote Originally Posted by Battleship789 View Post
    I'll second Pax Imperia. I usually spend 75+% of my time in the spaceship building minigame, leaving the 4X stuff on the side (except to research new ship tech). Honestly, my dream game is Empire at War with a Pax Imperia-style ship building system (and revamped ground battles, which are easily the worst part of the EaW games).

    Well, for the princely sum of £1.25, I might as well. It only has to keep me occupied for a couple of hours at that sort of price to be worth it...

    (Though I have now started BATTLETECH run, so it might be a while before I get to it...)

  22. - Top - End - #202
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    Default Re: What Are You Playing, Part 3: The Assassination of my Wallet by the Cowardly Sale

    Right now I'm bouncing around between Crusader Kings II and Monster Train while waiting for the release of Crusader Kings III and Cyberpunk 2077

  23. - Top - End - #203
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    Default Re: What Are You Playing, Part 3: The Assassination of my Wallet by the Cowardly Sale

    I grabbed the Heritor DLC for Age of Wonders Planetfall (and noticed too late I should have gotten the season pass so I could have gotten the new dlc as well. ) So now its time to get into it. Need to find a fun race + tech combo to feel comfortable with.
    Quote Originally Posted by Celestia View Post
    The British conquered the world in search of spices and then decided to use none of them.

  24. - Top - End - #204
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    Default Re: What Are You Playing, Part 3: The Assassination of my Wallet by the Cowardly Sale

    I've owned Middle Earth: Shadow of War for a while, so I decided to pick up and plow through Shadow Of Mordor first. The quality's there, but I've been finding the game distressingly easy (I'm still in what appears to be the first half of the game based on collectable numbers, hunting the warchiefs). I've already got max runes on all three weapons, and I've been resorting to dying on purpose just to have captains with decent levels (they seem to go up more if they manage to actually kill me).

  25. - Top - End - #205
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    BlackDragon

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

    Shadow of Mordor gets harder in the second half, when you start finding captains who have a *lot* of immunities.

  26. - Top - End - #206
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    Default Re: What Are You Playing, Part 3: The Assassination of my Wallet by the Cowardly Sale

    Been playing more Shantae and the Seven Sirens, I think I'm getting pretty far in, got all the upgrades and potions, the dances, most of the fusion coins and money is basically useless to me now, I got a card to lower my prices at shops I consider it useless because I got 999 gems and nothing to spend them on. might spend it all on figuring out how to get that minigame heart squid. like if you know what your doing, its not hard to get money in this game or figure out how to make healing items nearly obsolete with the right monster cards, and I've never used a golden crab once. like I have infinite healing now, I've broken this game and can probably complete at it my leisure, the question is how much time do I want to spend hunting down random nuggets and heart squids to get more health and siren cards. been liking it, funny and cute as Shantae always is.
    I'm also on discord as "raziere".


  27. - Top - End - #207
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    Default Re: What Are You Playing, Part 3: The Assassination of my Wallet by the Cowardly Sale

    Got back into Dark Souls 3 with the Cinders mod. it's really good. Whole ton of viable builds that weren't really possible or fun before.

  28. - Top - End - #208
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    Default Re: What Are You Playing, Part 3: The Assassination of my Wallet by the Cowardly Sale

    Still playing Pathfinder: Kingmaker, and flirting with the idea of restarting. I have character ideas I like the idea of, some of which would be cool but very difficult to start (Sensei Monk 2/Eccelisathurge X, specc'd as a summoner. Maybe throw in the wisdom-Sorcerer and go Mystic Theurge), some of which would be fun but difficult (Mad Dog Barbarian 1/ Archaeologist 6/Dragon Disciple 10; skills, fighting and big attributes, with a pet), but still chugging along with my Archaeologist/Dragon Disciple.
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  29. - Top - End - #209
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    Default Re: What Are You Playing, Part 3: The Assassination of my Wallet by the Cowardly Sale

    Quote Originally Posted by Gnoman View Post
    I've owned Middle Earth: Shadow of War for a while, so I decided to pick up and plow through Shadow Of Mordor first. The quality's there, but I've been finding the game distressingly easy (I'm still in what appears to be the first half of the game based on collectable numbers, hunting the warchiefs). I've already got max runes on all three weapons, and I've been resorting to dying on purpose just to have captains with decent levels (they seem to go up more if they manage to actually kill me).
    One of my big issues with SoM was that it was more fun when you were weak and a couple of captains was a huge danger, later in the game and fully upgraded you can be an unstoppable force of destruction... But sometimes, you'll come up against an orc who is also one of those. The sequel has difficulty settings and a bigger array of ways for orcs to counter what you can do, so it's a more satisfying challenge.

    I hope I didn't sound too negative, as I like the original a lot, and since it's so short, running through it to make a Nemesis Forge with cool orcs to transfer to the sequel is very worth it. Incidentally, there's a very easy way to select which orcs in the Forge will be the ones transferred over to Shadow of War: Just keep Marking Target on the two you want until the icons move.
    Last edited by NeoVid; 2020-06-11 at 02:17 PM.
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  30. - Top - End - #210
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    BlackDragon

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

    I have entirely the opposite viewpoint. I felt the second game wasn't as good as the first, simply because there were too many gosh-darned orcs to keep track of. The first game you had a nice number of them, and if the Nemesis system did its job properly there would be one or two that you absolutely grew to loathe--I remember one in my first playthrough who killed me at least four times, obviously getting more powerful and harder to kill each time. That didn't happen second time through, which is a shame.

    Shadow of War? Gave up on it. Not only were the stealth elements conspicuously diminished in favour of the whole "war" thing--and I really liked the stealthy bits in the first game--but, as mentioned above, I didn't really get to "know" any of the orcs and never got that sense of personal hate.

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