What are you playing 4: HD Remaster Gold Collector's Edition Thread of the Year

[Archpaladin Zousha]

I think something that's bugged me more and more about Mass Effect over the years (and its sister series, Dragon Age) is that with each new game there was more and more time devoted to referencing memes, Easter eggs and fandom in-jokes and it kind of got in the way of the rest of the games' own content.

Blasto's probably the best example: a funny bit of background flavor in the second game that everyone seemed to go nuts over, prompting Bioware to write an entire little radio play you can hear in bits and pieces in the third game and compiled on YouTube, which has the basic plot you'd expect of a throwaway gag padded out unreasonably long, and then in the Citadel DLC its now a multi-film blockbuster and you're asked to participate in filming it and it's somehow even WORSE, like an amateur YouTube project parodying a multi-film blockbuster! The same with the Conrad Verner mini-quests, Elcor Hamlet, "Sir Isaac Newton, " "I'm Commander Shepard, and this is my favorite store on the Citadel," "swooping is bad," "Party member disapproves," "Shepard. Wrex." and on and on and ON!

Yes, having decisions you've made in older games impacting the current one is cool, but by the end of it the games feel like they've run out of things to sincerely say and just go "Hey, remember stale joke x?! Oh boy, wasn't that WACKY?!"

[Zevox]

That's the reason I said progress the butchering, not start, though I still found a few of the regions enjoyable, and the DLC (specifically Trespasser and The Descent) were a lot better than the main story, so I have some hope. Said hope has merely been relegated to how I felt about Andromeda before it came out, e.g. "I'll see how the general reaction is and might buy it some undefined time later if it's good".

Oh geez, that reminds me - sometime before Dragon Age 4 comes out I'm going to need to either buy and play whatever the story-relevant DLC for Inquisition was, or at least watch a playthrough of it on Youtube. Never did that because the game didn't manage to make me want to keep playing it for long after finishing that first play-through, but I know that at least its last DLC was big in terms of story implications. Unfortunately already had what I assume to be its biggest twist spoiled for me, but I figure I should see it in full before playing any sequel.

I think something that's bugged me more and more about Mass Effect over the years (and its sister series, Dragon Age) is that with each new game there was more and more time devoted to referencing memes, Easter eggs and fandom in-jokes and it kind of got in the way of the rest of the games' own content.

Blasto's probably the best example: a funny bit of background flavor in the second game that everyone seemed to go nuts over, prompting Bioware to write an entire little radio play you can hear in bits and pieces in the third game and compiled on YouTube, which has the basic plot you'd expect of a throwaway gag padded out unreasonably long, and then in the Citadel DLC its now a multi-film blockbuster and you're asked to participate in filming it and it's somehow even WORSE, like an amateur YouTube project parodying a multi-film blockbuster! The same with the Conrad Verner mini-quests, Elcor Hamlet, "Sir Isaac Newton, " "I'm Commander Shepard, and this is my favorite store on the Citadel," "swooping is bad," "Party member disapproves," "Shepard. Wrex." and on and on and ON!

Yes, having decisions you've made in older games impacting the current one is cool, but by the end of it the games feel like they've run out of things to sincerely say and just go "Hey, remember stale joke x?! Oh boy, wasn't that WACKY?!"

Uh, what? None of that stuff is more than a throwaway gag, often in the background. The Citadel DLC gives it a bit more screen time, but the Citadel DLC was just them having fun with things and giving the series and its characters a fond sendoff, and that's precisely what made it so wonderful.

[Silverraptor]

Never heard that one before - I thought the original intended ending was supposed to be about use of the Mass Effect tech causing a build up of Dark Energy that would cause stars to age rapidly, like the one at Haestrom, ultimately dooming the galaxy if left unchecked? Thus the Reapers culling organic life once it became advanced enough to use Mass Effect tech.

Eh, I guess the two concepts are similar at the end of the day. And yeah, either way, would be preferable to what we got by a long shot.

Huh. Never heard that version of it. But then again, that does have a plot hole. If the point of the culling is to stop them from using mass effect tech, then why leave mass effect relays everywhere for them to study, develop the technologies, and use to invite the culling to begin with?

[Taevyr]

Oh geez, that reminds me - sometime before Dragon Age 4 comes out I'm going to need to either buy and play whatever the story-relevant DLC for Inquisition was, or at least watch a playthrough of it on Youtube. Never did that because the game didn't manage to make me want to keep playing it for long after finishing that first play-through, but I know that at least its last DLC was big in terms of story implications. Unfortunately already had what I assume to be its biggest twist spoiled for me, but I figure I should see it in full before playing any sequel.

Meta-story wise, only Descent and Trespasser are of real importance (I think, been a while). Descent is essentially the closest thing you can get to replicating a dungeon delve in Inquisition, but it's a fun Deep Roads romp with a few Dwarven lore revelations. Nothing that can't be summed up in a sentence or two though.

As for Trespasser, I can guess what the big twist is you heard, but there's a lot of lore dumped into that DLC, and quite a bit of non-metaplot-story as well. It's the one that gave me hope DA4 might actually be good despite vanilla DA3, probably against my better judgement.

[warty goblin]

I've always thought the most interesting thing they could have done with the Reapers was to lean really hard into two things:

1) the galactic scale ecological effects of all sufficiently advanced life being sterilized once every 10,000 years or whatever.
2) that the Reapers are built out of a species.

That is, to me the Reapers are a (very bad) solution to two problems; stasis and preservation, and the argument for the Reapers goes as follows: Argument 1: absent Reaping, eventually either a single species, or a very small number of species will dominate the entire galaxy, and either accidentally through dominance and exploitation of habitable planets or as outright policy will prevent the appearance of any further sapient species. Argument 2: the diversity of biological life has value and should be preserved and increased through time. Conclusion, no species can be allowed to exist for too long, otherwise biological diversity will be minimized. But no species can be completely destroyed, and must instead be preserved in some form. Hence the Reaper, both savior of the future and preserver of the past. The garden will be allowed to grow.

There's some interesting places you could go with this. For instance the Reapers could argue that all of humanity, including Shepard, only exists because Earth wasn't turned into an alien housing development a million years ago. If a species has value, can you prove humanity is worth more than the hundreds of sapient species their reign would stifle and destroy? And of course you could have some argument about the worth of the individual and the usual hero lines as a response, but the Reapers would be a solution to a particular problem that's actually coherent from a very inhuman (or at least inhumane) point of view. You could even get destroying the Mass Relays as a response to this, since that would effectively isolate planets and give their life time to develop without getting paved over.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

Uh, what? None of that stuff is more than a throwaway gag, often in the background. The Citadel DLC gives it a bit more screen time, but the Citadel DLC was just them having fun with things and giving the series and its characters a fond sendoff, and that's precisely what made it so wonderful.

Yeah, and I feel like they could have just STAYED throwaway background gags or fandom in-jokes, but when you get to Citadel the characters are all but turning to the camera and winking obnoxiously! It's like, the memes are fine on the Internet, you don't need BioWare to actively reference them in later games as a kind of shallow fanservice!

[Anonymouswizard]

You could even get destroying the Mass Relays as a response to this, since that would effectively isolate planets and give their life time to develop without getting paved over.

Sadly the Protheans don't seem to have been that much more advanced than the 'present' species, and had already begun to reverse engineer the Mass Relays. Sadly even with Andromeda's bugfixed FTL Mass Relays are incredibly useful, and so you're likely only delaying the issue by a few hundred years plus setup.

On the other, the Reapers dealing with such a problem would be interesting. Like how the Inhibitors worked better before they appeared onscreen and were just pursuing what they thought was thelong term preservation of life. But such villains just tend to disappoint once onscreen.

[Zevox]

Huh. Never heard that version of it. But then again, that does have a plot hole. If the point of the culling is to stop them from using mass effect tech, then why leave mass effect relays everywhere for them to study, develop the technologies, and use to invite the culling to begin with?

For the same reason we were always given, I'd assume - it makes the whole process much quicker and easier. They know where organic civilization will be that way, and can quickly strike a crippling blow by starting the harvesting out with taking the Citadel. I'd assume that, had that been the story, the argument given would be that absent that, organic civilizations would still have eventually developed mass effect tech on its own, but then the Reapers would've had a harder time noticing when they did it, and would need to scour the entire galaxy to find them, having no idea where they may have gone with it.

Meta-story wise, only Descent and Trespasser are of real importance (I think, been a while). Descent is essentially the closest thing you can get to replicating a dungeon delve in Inquisition, but it's a fun Deep Roads romp with a few Dwarven lore revelations. Nothing that can't be summed up in a sentence or two though.

As for Trespasser, I can guess what the big twist is you heard, but there's a lot of lore dumped into that DLC, and quite a bit of non-metaplot-story as well. It's the one that gave me hope DA4 might actually be good despite vanilla DA3, probably against my better judgement.

Trespasser sounds like it's the one I'm thinking of, yeah. But eh, getting ahead of myself perhaps. We still don't even have a name for the game, and the one teaser it's had barely showed anything. Once we have some idea of when it's coming, I'll start giving serious consideration to what to do about it. You know, assuming they don't put me off buying it with the previews, the way they did with Andromeda.

Yeah, and I feel like they could have just STAYED throwaway background gags or fandom in-jokes, but when you get to Citadel the characters are all but turning to the camera and winking obnoxiously! It's like, the memes are fine on the Internet, you don't need BioWare to actively reference them in later games as a kind of shallow fanservice!

I don't even know which references were memes or not, I don't spend time on parts of the internet where memes are a thing; but personally, all of Citadel was just wonderful fun as far as I'm concerned. Slightly self-depreciating humor and references to fun moments great and small from the past three games is not "shallow fanservice," it's a sign of a developer that understands what people like about their games and shares in that fun. It shouldn't be a constant thing - unless we're talking about something like Deadpool that is built largely around that kind of meta-humor - but it wasn't, and as part of something like the Citadel DLC, which was a celebratory capstone just meant to be a fun final romp with the series' characters, it's a wholly appropriate and greatly appreciated.

[Corlindale]

These days I pretty much only play Switch. Gotta say, that's such an amazing console for squeezing in a bit of game time in the busy life of parenthood and full-time work.

Specifically, I'm playing tons of Slay the Spire. Such a perfect game for the Switch. Touch screen controls are intuitive and work flawlessly, the graphics are simplistic enough that you don't feel the small screen size hurts the experience, and it's a game that can be played in both short and long bursts, easily fitting into whatever time one might have. Also have Spire on PC, but have only gotten really into it through the Switch.

I'm starting to climb the Ascensions and become a bit better at the game. At first I was way too obsessed with focusing on a 'build', but I'm learning to adapt more on the fly, and to focus on synergies and filling gaps instead of striving for the 'perfect' deck of x archetype. Like, my previous instinct with Silent was to throw everything behind either poison or shivs depending on my first few card picks, but I've ended up with some pretty fun hybrid decks once I started to adapt more on the fly. Like a deck that never got damage boosts for shivs, but still used them to crank up dexterity with Kunai while Noxious Fumes and other poison cards took care of the actual offense.

Similarly, I was way too obsessed with focusing on a single type of orb with the Defect, but I've also discovered that there are many other ways to play, and hybrids can also work pretty well.

I'm still doing best with Silent and Defect. With Ironclad I often struggle a bit with defense (perhaps because his regeneration makes me more reckless than I should be), and I still haven't quite wrapped my head around the stance-dancing builds of the Watcher, although I do pretty well with Divinity-focused decks and also had quite a bit of fun with an Alpha-Scry deck.

Really fun game, strongly recommended - especially on the Switch (didn't someone talk about the lack of good portable versions of this game earlier in the thread?).

[Razade]

Never heard that one before - I thought the original intended ending was supposed to be about use of the Mass Effect tech causing a build up of Dark Energy that would cause stars to age rapidly, like the one at Haestrom, ultimately dooming the galaxy if left unchecked? Thus the Reapers culling organic life once it became advanced enough to use Mass Effect tech.

That makes no sense, plot wise. The Reapers are the ones that encouraged and proliferated Mass technology throughout the galaxy so...why would they be culling life before it could use the tech they made so they could cull all of life easier? Not that I wouldn't put it past Bioware to write such a tragically poor story with a massive plot hole like that but still.

[tonberrian]

Got hooked on Tales of Maj'Eyal recently. Just unlocked the Wyrmic class. I'd been using Cursed, but they lack in-class healing at any reasonable rate (and in fact take a penalty if they aren't at high resource), and Wyrmic has both Fungus and Call of the Wild, two good skill sets for healing. Will see how it goes.

[factotum]

Got hooked on Tales of Maj'Eyal recently. Just unlocked the Wyrmic class. I'd been using Cursed, but they lack in-class healing at any reasonable rate (and in fact take a penalty if they aren't at high resource), and Wyrmic has both Fungus and Call of the Wild, two good skill sets for healing. Will see how it goes.

I've been on that game for a couple of weeks as well--at first because it was one of the few games I could run on my crappy laptop when I was in hospital, but been playing it loads since I came out as well. Despite people constantly telling me how bad they are I'm partial to the Skeleton "race", mainly because they get a good shield and a good heal as part of their race abilities--although they arguably need to have the heal due to being unable to use infusions (no skin to inscribe them on)! Currently running a Skeleton Brawler through Nightmare and have just got to Dreadfell.
In fact, I think I saw a tonberrian in the online "chat" the game always runs, and I thought the name sounded familiar!

[Corlindale]

ToME is such an amazing game, you both have so many hours of fun ahead of you.

Wyrmic is also one of my favourite classes. It's good timing to play them now, they were a bit lackluster for a long time until a recent update gave their breath weapons a major buff. Beat the game with a Wyrmic after the update, whereas I previously started struggling early on. Generally a big fan of the Wilder classes (except Stone Warden which I still haven't wrapped my head around), just because I'm a bit lazy and I love having a ton of regeneration going on.

Skeletons can be fun, I like Skeleton Archers especially because (bow-)Archers like both the Strength and the Dex from the Skeleton racial.

I've been itching to play the game again recently, really want to try the new Wanderer class (basically an Adventurer with randomly selected skills) as I've wanted something like that for a long time. I remember when playing Dungeons of Dredmor that there was so much to be had by playing random builds, so something enabling that in ToME is very appreciated.

[Anteros]

I personally enjoy playing as adventurer and building some broken stuff. I do stick within a theme for the character though so it isn't completely broken.

[factotum]

ToME is such an amazing game, you both have so many hours of fun ahead of you.

I'm fully aware, I have something like 570 hours in Steam! Only finished the main campaign once, though (in Normal, with a Brawler)...

[Cespenar]

I personally enjoy playing as adventurer and building some broken stuff. I do stick within a theme for the character though so it isn't completely broken.

The adventurer setting is (if I'm not mistaking its name for something else) one of the best additions to the roguelike genre in my opinion. I'd probably not have played half as much ToME if it had only the classic permadeath mode.

Don't get me wrong, I wasted a lot of my time back in the ADOM days, grinding through hundreds and hundreds of characters, but that was high-schooler mentality and it should ideally stay back there.

[factotum]

The adventurer setting is (if I'm not mistaking its name for something else) one of the best additions to the roguelike genre in my opinion. I'd probably not have played half as much ToME if it had only the classic permadeath mode.

Don't get me wrong, I wasted a lot of my time back in the ADOM days, grinding through hundreds and hundreds of characters, but that was high-schooler mentality and it should ideally stay back there.

I think he means the Adventurer *class* rather than the game mode. Adventurer is a class where you can basically pick any talent trees that exist in the game. As the game is at pains to tell you, this isn't exactly balanced!

I did play a few hours of ADOM but it's just a bit too traditional for my tastes. The requirement to eat or die, for instance, I just find that to be annoying busywork that adds nothing to the game experience. ToME not having that is a massive tick in its favour!

[Cespenar]

I think he means the Adventurer *class* rather than the game mode. Adventurer is a class where you can basically pick any talent trees that exist in the game. As the game is at pains to tell you, this isn't exactly balanced!

I did play a few hours of ADOM but it's just a bit too traditional for my tastes. The requirement to eat or die, for instance, I just find that to be annoying busywork that adds nothing to the game experience. ToME not having that is a massive tick in its favour!

Oh true, yeah. Turns out, the permadeath setting's name that I was referring to is "adventurer" as well.

Anyway, as misaddressed as my point was, I still stand by it.

About eating, well, that's just classic roguelike themes in my book, though I'm of course biased towards that. As a short primer, it's not really "eat or die", but there's actually plenty of logistical risk taking and decisions there to make it basically another type of resource management.

ToME, as much as I like it, really stands in a different sub-subgenre of roguelikes as opposed to classic survival ones like ADOM. ToME is much, much more geared towards skill combos, builds, item-pairing to those builds, etc. that it's closer (in a sense) to something like Diablo or WoW, rather than ADOM. ADOM and ToME definitely scratches different itches, so to say.

[Rynjin]

I picked up Resident Evil 7 and flew through it due to the Resident Evil sale. A really good game for $10, and I picked up the End of Zoe DLC because I liked it so much.

It's an interesting beast in the RE franchise. I have watched or played every other main game in the series except 6, though I have only personally played RE: Make, 3, most of the remake of 3, 5, and about an hour of 6 before I determined it wasn't even worth my time to watch an LP of it.

It's pretty commonly known that the series got more action based as time went on, starting with 2, but really solidifying with Code: Veronica and then 4 representing what most regard as the perfect melding of old and new, before 5 took it a little too far out of the "scary zone" (still a super fun game though).

Resident Evil 7 has always been billed to me as kind of a "fresh start" for the series, but I don't think that's quite true. What it is is...aesthetically different? And a return to roughly the action level or more accurately EMPOWERMENT level of RE 3 or Code: Veronica, with a lot more generosity in ammunition. Ethan is relatively durable, and ammo is surprisingly plentiful; something I wasn't used to as I scrounged so much I ended up never firing the grenade launcher, had a full magnum, 300 machine gun rounds, about 50 shotgun shells, and as much handgun ammo as I could carry by the time I ended up at the final boss (though that's generous) thinking to myself "boy I could have made this game a lot easier on myself if I hadn't been expecting there to be more boss fights". I was extremely low on healing supplies though in the final stretch, which tells me I should have parlayed more of those bullets into HP instead fo hoarding them for a tough fight that never came.

Encounter numbers are surprisingly low overall, with an interesting twist on the formula. The new baddies, the Molded, are sort of nega-zombies. Where zombies are STUPID and SLOW as a wise man once put it before being killed by a zombie, these things are...still slow overall, and definitely stupid, but trade out the usual numerical advantage of zombies for being very rare (in the first 3-4 hours of the game I encountered 5 of them, and all in the same general location) and extremely durable; it takes 6-7 headshots with the handgun to kill one, which I found kind of absurd in the early game and basically just defaulted to knifing them until I got the shotgun.

I actually found this frustrating more than scary, and I never quite got over this. There are very few enemy types (there are in fact only 3, maybe 4 enemy types in the game at all, besides the two...technically three bosses) and all seem like they were actually MEANT for a more action oriented game, with several having very fast, very long range attacks that do brutal damage. I figured out early on that the game's main change to the formula is to encourage you to actually stand your ground and fight nearly EVERY ENEMY, because just juking past dudes and running to your objective is simply impossible in most cases since entering the inventory to solve puzzles doesn't stop time and these things are just fast and aggressive enough to put a kibosh on that. It's kind of like an entire game made up of the Crimson Heads from the first game's remake on the Gamecube.

This actually kills the tension of the game a bit in some spots, since you're kind of pulled into this mindset of "Okay, well, this fight is mandatory so I know the game isn't going to screw me on ammo as long as I aim my shots right". It kind of takes away the decision making element of previous games where if you kill a zombie early on, you don't know whether you're ever getting that ammo back, whether coming into this specific room and killing something was actually WORTH it or not. In 7, exploring is ALWAYS worth it. That last bit isn't really a good or a bad, it just is.

That said, I still think the game is great, largely because of two areas.

Spoiler: For pretty much the whole game

Show

The game is basically divided into four parts. You have the main house, the old house, the...barn(?) or whatever Lucas' funhosue was meant to be originally, and the boat (plus a small mines segment at the end, but it's super short and linear)

The main house is entirely a quest to escape as Jack Baker pursues you like a low budget Mr. X or Nemesis. I...never found him intimidating, sadly, as he's basically just a hillbilly with glasses and a shovel for most of the game. This is really core to the central aesthetic change of the game; from what I'd consider wholly unrealistic settings to a more down to earth option.

If classic Resident Evil is Dawn of the Dead mixed with an action movie, this is The Hills Have Eyes, until it isn't. It reflects a more modern view of horror, and it's definitely a change. I found the surroundings more disturbing than Jack himself, as it unsettlingly reminded me of how some...less savory members of my family lived as a kid, or that time we went in to clear out my great-grandmother's old and long abandoned house and found stuff like 30 year old cans of green beans in her pantry and mold everywhere. Bad memories of my childhood all around, yay!

I also found it funny how you spend the first segment of the game, about an hour long if you take it slow like I did, dealing with very mundane puzzles. Find the bolt cutters to open the gate, find a fuse to power the stairs...right up until after the big trailer cutscene "dinner" and you're thrown into very cheesy, very Resident Evil "find this esoteric metal horse plate to plug into the big circular metal panel on the hillbilly's door" puzzle and "shadow activated locks"; it did a lot to put me at ease, actually.

The Old House is the first big shining moment, with no enemies you can actually fight. Just swarms of bugs you have to avoid until you get a flamethrower, and Marguerite (by far the spookiest villain in the game with her creepy bug theme and insectoid movement pattern) who is technically beatable here I think but it's beyond the firepower you can likely toss out on a first playthrough and so needs to be avoided like the plague to get where you need to go in a sort of forced stealth segment. Great, tense stuff and a real good jumpscare near the end.

By the end of this you've fought both of the bosses: Jack with some hedge clippers, who you get to maul with a chainsaw and it's cool, and Marguerite who seemingly exists to drain all of your currently stocked supplies down to nothing because she fits her cockroach aesthetic a little TOO well.

Then the next segment is some last exploring of the main house to get to the barn, which is just annoying. Tripwires with explosives everywhere to eat up your last remaining handgun ammo and Lucas Baker cackling in your ear constantly before he puts you through an interesting "Happy Birthday" escape room puzzle you'll need to have played an optional videotape from earlier to not die during.

Finally, Jack Baker shows up again in big monster form to put all the residual fear you might have had of him out the window as he slams you into the ground and in an extremely good delivery goes "**** you" for emphasis, which is I think intentional, as it leads into the boat which makes you play as Mia, who is largely defenseless for most of the segment, and is awesome.

Being forced to run from the monsters for most of the boat segment leaves you feeling truly empowered when you get the machine gun and can just mow everything down with impunity. Easily the best part of the game.

And finally "the final boss" is just a cutscene, followed by an "advancing wall" boss reminiscent of final form Birkin from RE2 who you shoot in the face 6 times with the magnum and it's over. Kind of a let down.

While this sounds a bit negative, I still think this is a great game, it's just something that could have been better in the hindsight of having finished it, save for the two main DLC. It's a cool "greatest hits" of the previous games, with the structure of the main house in particular being reminiscent of a miniature Spencer Mansion, right down to a nice little nod to the shotgun puzzle that could get Chris killed in the first game, and well worth it for any fans of the series, or anyone who's considered jumping in before but didn't feel like it; it's largely standalone with only the ending bringing in ANY ties to the rest of the series, and might actually be better for those without preconceived notions of the series to enjoy.

...Boy this was long but I really wanted to get that off my chest.

[Corlindale]

I'm fully aware, I have something like 570 hours in Steam! Only finished the main campaign once, though (in Normal, with a Brawler)...

Ah, I misinterpreted your post then, thought you were also a relative newcomer!

I've beaten the original campaign three times in Normal with Paradox Mage, Oozemancer and Wyrmic. Paradox Mage was the most fun (probably my favourite class overall), but Oozemancer felt most effortless with all the defenses and regeneration and anti-magic.

I also beat Embers of Rage twice, with Oozemancer and Annihilator. Annihilator also ranks among my top classes, there's something magical about playing what is mostly a fantasy game and running around with auto-firing shoulder-mounted rocket launchers, while occasionally taking to the sky pretending to be Pharah from Overwatch.

I have started to play around in Nightmare difficulty, and while it does not feel brutally unfair, it does make me think much more about my defensive talents and the order I pick them in.

[factotum]

I have started to play around in Nightmare difficulty, and while it does not feel brutally unfair, it does make me think much more about my defensive talents and the order I pick them in.

I actually do find Nightmare a little unfair--the difficulty is jacked up quite a bit, but there doesn't seem to be a commensurate increase in loot drops. To my mind, if I kill something tough I should get better loot, but that doesn't seem to happen in Nightmare. I can't remember the furthest I've got in that difficulty--I know I'm got at least as far as Reknor, but can't recall if I've ever gone further.

[Corlindale]

I actually do find Nightmare a little unfair--the difficulty is jacked up quite a bit, but there doesn't seem to be a commensurate increase in loot drops. To my mind, if I kill something tough I should get better loot, but that doesn't seem to happen in Nightmare. I can't remember the furthest I've got in that difficulty--I know I'm got at least as far as Reknor, but can't recall if I've ever gone further.

I never really had that expectation, so it does not bother me. I think the difficulty settings are just meant to increase the challenge, so I kind of expected things to get more difficult without adding any kind of rewards. Though if Nightmare increases the chances of rare enemies (don't remember if it does) I guess it would statistically add a higher quantity of rare loot which makes it a bit more likely that you'll get good stuff.

I've mostly played Embers in Nightmare so far (it's a bit more fast-paced so better for my life with limited gaming time), and I really struggle against a certain mid-game boss just before the Gates of Morning. Might have made it past her once only to die slightly later, don't remember off the top of my head.

[Anteros]

My problem with higher difficulties in ToME is that they tend to just put the shield buffs on everything. It basically breaks down to whether or not your build has a way to strip your opponent's buffs or else you'll eventually run into something you just can't damage.

[tyckspoon]

I never really had that expectation, so it does not bother me. I think the difficulty settings are just meant to increase the challenge, so I kind of expected things to get more difficult without adding any kind of rewards. Though if Nightmare increases the chances of rare enemies (don't remember if it does) I guess it would statistically add a higher quantity of rare loot which makes it a bit more likely that you'll get good stuff.

Nightmare difficulty moderately increases enemy levels (on standard enemies this is basically irrelevant, but it does mean Rares and higher tiers of enemies that have random class talents are on average tougher because they have more talents/higher levels in said talents), as well as significantly increasing the rate of Rare enemies. In Nightmare mode it is pretty common to run into rooms that have multiple Rare enemies at once, which you will almost never have to handle in Normal, and IME adventuring parties/Zigur/Orc patrol encounters on the world map are quite a bit more dangerous, because they consist entirely of Rare enemies with buffed levels in a very confined combat area.

You do get a lot more Rare-quality item drops from the increased rate of Rare enemies, but it's been my experience that this doesn't actually increase the usability level of your equipment much - the vast majority of it still won't have the stats you want for your current class, and Rare items don't roll that much higher ranges or that many more properties than regular items. Nightmare ends up being fairly similar to Normal, with faster XP gain (higher level enemies + more frequent 'powerful enemy' bonuses from Rare+ fights) and somewhat more gold (extra income from trashing/selling all those useless rare items.) It does punish you for not paying attention more and encourages/enforces best-practices play habits like always starting fights with a defensive ability, because you are a lot more likely to run into a rare or multiple rares with abilities that will end you in a hurry if you don't respect them.

[Cespenar]

So, I realized I never played Fire Emblem 5, and decided to give it a try.

Pretty good all in all, all the complexity (and perhaps a tiny bit more?) of 6-8, somewhat less beautiful (but not exceedingly so) pixel art, similar writing, etc.

I alao decided on doing some kind of self-imposed ironman/bronzeman kinda thingy on top of that, but I'll see how that will go.

[IthilanorStPete]

So, I realized I never played Fire Emblem 5, and decided to give it a try.

Pretty good all in all, all the complexity (and perhaps a tiny bit more?) of 6-8, somewhat less beautiful (but not exceedingly so) pixel art, similar writing, etc.

I alao decided on doing some kind of self-imposed ironman/bronzeman kinda thingy on top of that, but I'll see how that will go.

FE5 is Thracia 776, right? I've always heard that it's probably the hardest classic FE game.

[NRSASD]

Been playing lots of Age of Wonders: Planetfall. Really enjoying the xcom-lite/civ-lite hybrid of the game, and laughing about the weird strategies I can develop. Playing as the Syndicate (slave soldiers and psionic overlords), my current favorite is using the oathbound tier 1 melee infantry as my indentured line and combo-ing it with the celestian tech tree to make extremely cheap, extremely durable troops that heavily debuff anyone who dares touch them. Backing that up with a dependable sniper line and basically everything dies hilariously.

Next game on my list: Darkwood. I played it a while back and really enjoyed it, but never finished it. Which is a mistake I intend to rectify!

[Kantaki]

Started Monster Hunter Stories 2
Mostly it's really fun, only Navirou is even more annoying than I remember from the original.
Though it comes off as the previous adventures going to his head, so it might be intended?

Also, every single named Rathalos is called "Ratha"
It was alright in Stories, where we only had the MC's Rathalos and they named him when they were a child.
Also, the rival/angry childhood buddy later named his Rathian Rathi, which was actually funny*.

But in Stories 2? Guardian Ratha. Razewing Ratha. The MC's Ratha. At this point it's actually getting confusing.
If Stories 3 is set in the same world too we'll probably get into the double digits...

*Especially because he was all "Monsters are dangerous and we should treat them as tools not friends".

[Anteros]

Started Monster Hunter Stories 2
Mostly it's really fun, only Navirou is even more annoying than I remember from the original.
Though it comes off as the previous adventures going to his head, so it might be intended?

Also, every single named Rathalos is called "Ratha"
It was alright in Stories, where we only had the MC's Rathalos and they named him when they were a child.
Also, the rival/angry childhood buddy later named his Rathian Rathi, which was actually funny*.

But in Stories 2? Guardian Ratha. Razewing Ratha. The MC's Ratha. At this point it's actually getting confusing.
If Stories 3 is set in the same world too we'll probably get into the double digits...

*Especially because he was all "Monsters are dangerous and we should treat them as tools not friends".

I thought about grabbing this, but how much do I need to play the original to understand it?

[Kantaki]

I thought about grabbing this, but how much do I need to play the original to understand it?

So far I'd say you don't.
You still should, it's a great game, but you don't need to.
There's just Navirou making a few references and, going by the trailers, some allies from the original will show up.

Maybe to understand Navirou's origin and why he sticks out like a sore thumb looks different from the other cat people?
No idea if that's gonna come up in 2 beyond "isn't a regular Felyne".