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

[Wookieetank]

My "eff you" analogy might not have been perfectly apt, in retrospect. It was more in the sense of "it's really difficult and you don't get any hints".

Not to mention surprise difficulty jumps. In world 4 or 5, I forget which, one of my hint guides mention that one of the puzzles I'm stuck on is considered the hardest puzzle in the game, despite showing up halfway through.

[Zevox]

So, Great Ace Attorney Chronicles...

Spoiler: Case 4 spoilers.

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So, I've met the game's Doctor Watson equivalent: Iris Wilson. A 10-year-old girl with bright pink hair, a steampunk inventor look, and a degree in medicine. She is Herlock Sholmes' roomate, and she also seems to be smarter than Herlock, given all of his "great deductions" so far have needed Ryunosuke to correct the flaws in them, while hers was spot-on immediately, and the Scotland Yard detective you interact with seems to highly respect her while barely tolerating Herlock. Oh, and she invented a gun that shoots smoke grenades in varied colors, because if you have to be veiled in smoke, it might as well be colorful smoke. She's also the writer of "The Adventures of Herlock Sholmes," in which she deliberately changes herself to a middle-aged man named John Wilson because, well, a 10-year-old girl tagging along with a great detective is just too ridiculous to be credible, isn't it?

God bless Japanese game developers and all of their weird, wacky ways.

[Anteros]

I personally kind of feel like the "famous adult gets credit for quirky sidekick's work" trope has been beaten to death so badly that it makes me cringe. Not that this is the thread to discuss it.

[Zevox]

I personally kind of feel like the "famous adult gets credit for quirky sidekick's work" trope has been beaten to death so badly that it makes me cringe. Not that this is the thread to discuss it.

Oh, he's not getting credit for her work - at least, not that I'm seeing in the game.

Spoiler

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So far, I've only ever spoken to them separately, with Sholmes being the one who actually shows up to help you during cases. Wilson you meet only when you go to try and find Sholmes at his home (he's not there at the time, and she ends up pointing you to where you can find him). And from the way she describes it, she mostly just listens to Sholmes' stories of his investigations and then turns them into stories, with some embellishments for the sake of entertainment. So it's more that he got famous because she makes him out to be a better detective than he actually is in her stories, while she would probably be a much better one, but that's just not what she does.

[tonberrian]

Finally coming up on the endgame for the first time in Tales of Maj'Eyal. I've just returned from the East and kicked the butts of all the backup guardians. Just a few more dungeons between me and victory. Unfortunately due to a really unlucky run in the crypt you get ambushed into, I have 1 life, one blood of life charge, and a ring of the dead between me and permadeath. Still, I'm a brawler with HUGE GUTS so I can take a few blows. Gear is nice, but i've seen better. I was trying for the All Escorts chievo but failed one in Dreadfell, and by that point i had used up all my lives and was thinking I'd die to the Master. But i did not and here we are.

[factotum]

Brawler remains the only class I've ever completed ToME in--they're beasts at high levels.

[Anteros]

I've beaten it with Arcane Blade, and most of the rogue classes. Most of my runs are with the adventurer class though. I've heard stories about how overpowered the Brawler is, but I haven't gotten around to playing it.

[Cespenar]

By the way, it seems like Jupiter Hell, doomrl's "sequel", if we can call it that, seems to be out. From what I've seen so far, it seems to play exactly like a graphical version of doomrl, with a few upgrades.

The graphics seem to get a little cluttered when there are enemies standing over some items, but I'm not sure.

I think I'll give it a try simply because of how solid the original chassis is, but I'm not sold so far on whether there are any good new inventions or not.

[Lord Raziere]

I am playing Borderlands the Pre-Sequel again, I'm getting the hang of playing Sniper with Aurelia, the skill tree unlock to do things like recover health with a crit just suddenly makes her work. my frost shuriken for tougher enemies also helps. hopefully I'll someday focus enough to concentrate on playing Borderlands 2 and 3 now that I have them instead of flitting about between games now.

I also got back into playing FFXIV on a free trial, really like the look and graphics of Eorzea, I think I figured out the rotation for Thaumaturge as I've gotten to level 11, and apparently my cat girl mage has been chosen by the crystals to find them and banish the darkness or whatever in her foolish wandering around blasting spells at things. lot of the beginning quests seem down to earth stuff or fetch quests that make a lot of sense for the world, its a change from WoW which I used to play years ago, which was a lot more comical in comparison in terms of quest writing, how it looked and felt things like that. I'm oddly okay with it because they're played so realistically that its believable a beginner would given tasks like delivering this or that, or run an errand because they want to make sure they can trust you minor tasks before you do anything important and the side story I stumbled upon of these businesses being basically strongarmed into leaving by this scummy.....landshark I guess? and making sure they can keep living there felt small but heroic, which is sometimes hard to nail. They just did a really good job of selling you on that this is could be an actual world with people living in it, and your apart of that world.

[PoeticallyPsyco]

So, um turns out I totally overprepared for a boss fight in Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice.

I found out a few months ago when I was last playing that it's possible to skip the double Guardian Ape fight if you don't find the Guardian Ape on your way down to the depths. Since I've heard horror stories about that one, I resolved not to go back to it until I was sure I was ready. So I'd beat the next boss on the main story route (the True Monk, who is a complete *******) and then grind the memory of the Guardian Ape until I could beat that, so I'd have the patterns down.

And boy did I. I won. On my first try. Without even using a resurrection. It was a bigger stomp than returning to the Gyobu fight after getting good against Lady Butterfly.

The irony is, I really could have used the rewards from that fight in all those fights I did in between when I was supposed to do it and when I decided I was ready. Oops.

Spoiler: specifics

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So yeah, turns out the upgrade the Guardian/Headless Ape gets from Reflection of Strength is very significant, much more so than even having a second combatant in the same arena that matches the first phase. Even more than the reduced health and damage, though, its patterns were way easier. I don't know if that's also a Refection upgrade or just due to the smaller arena, but he stayed in range much more and did the 'stand way up and fall straight down' attack way more frequently, and that one leaves him extremely open if you deflect it.

[Zevox]

Wrapped up the first game of Great Ace Attorney Chronicles. It's great fun, much like the series always is, with all of its drama and comedy. I definitely wound up enjoying the inclusion of Herlock Sholmes - though I suspect I might have a bit more were I familiar with the actual Sherlock Holmes books, since there's clear references to those stories, but I don't know enough about them to fully understand them. The jury system also provided a neat change of pace for the franchise, though I have to admit I was expecting them to do a bit more with it. Make you need to make your argument in certain ways to convince certain jurors or the like, for instance, rather than using it simply as a different vehicle for figuring out flaws in the prosecution's case. Still, fun to see what they did do with it anyway. And honestly, it was a lot of fun just seeing the series go wild with British stereotypes for a change, made for some fun NPCs of sorts that you don't get elsewhere in the series.

I am surprised, though, to see it end with so many dangling plot threads and some blatant sequel-bait, though. I don't believe Ace Attorney has ever done that before. Games might call back to past games at times, and certainly old characters popped up that they clearly expected you to remember from time to time, but each game's stories have always been fully self-contained to my recollection. Which does make me kind of grateful that we didn't get the games released outside of Japan until we could get this compilation of both the first game and its sequel, honestly. So, onward to that sequel!

[Anteros]

So, um turns out I totally overprepared for a boss fight in Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice.

Spoiler: specifics

Show

So yeah, turns out the upgrade the Guardian/Headless Ape gets from Reflection of Strength is very significant, much more so than even having a second combatant in the same arena that matches the first phase. Even more than the reduced health and damage, though, its patterns were way easier. I don't know if that's also a Refection upgrade or just due to the smaller arena, but he stayed in range much more and did the 'stand way up and fall straight down' attack way more frequently, and that one leaves him extremely open if you deflect it.

He does the falling down attack if you parry the rest of his combo correctly. It sounds like you just got better at parrying him.

[PoeticallyPsyco]

He does the falling down attack if you parry the rest of his combo correctly. It sounds like you just got better at parrying him.

Spoiler

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He also did it after each 'leap into the air' sweep attack, which I never once saw him do in the Reflection of Strength. He also seemed to do that leap-sweep more often, so the end result was me getting to wail on him more than twice as often. That said, I was much closer to him during that leap attack in the double fight than in the Reflection (where I was really trying to keep my distance); perhaps he doesn't do that follow up if you're too far away? That's very good intel if so.

[oxybe]

Started a homeless playthrough of the Sims 4 recently.

basically you buy a plot of land, cheat yourself to 0 cash and press play.

Rules:
-You can't build anything on your plot or buy furniture/stuff. Only things you find/steal.
-You can plant stuff if you find seeds.
-You can't get a job
-You can't join a family
-survive a year (spring>summer>autumn>winter)

It's been weird and very different.

Basically I spend my time rooting through garbage cans, digging through dirt mounds for buried stuff, harvesting wildflowers, stealing when the option comes up and fishing. My biggest windfall was when I got a call stating i inherited money. Which my character immediately used on a completely "legal" investment when a young lady asked him for money that has yet to pay off. I never said he was smart.

Food, bathing, toilet and sleep are the biggest concerns since I can't own a stove/fridge/microwave, a shower, a toilet or bed. I did find some workarounds though:
-parks usually have a grill you can use to make hotdogs/burgers on, for a price. alternatively, some places have stands you can buy food at.
-washing your hands counts as bathing and can be repeated frequently until the need is no more.
-parks and other areas usually have public washrooms to do your business in
-if you queue naps on the same bench, you'll fall asleep and it won't break the sleeping animation to go from nap to nap.

Social and fun are largely easy metrics to fix, as you can find a lot of random sims walking about to start up conversations with.

His best friend is a stray cat called Gucci he shared a sandwich with. That was a good day.

Spring was easy going and summer required a change of clothes to not suffer a negative moodlet of being warm (something that I can IRL relate with... so dang humid here... blek). we'll see how the rest of summer goes later.

[Zevox]

Well, I succumbed again. Street Fighter 5 put out another new character who looked cool and fun, and I went and played her. This time, it's Akira Kazama, biker chick from Rival Schools. And much like every other time they've done this and gotten me to go back, the character is cool and I like her, but I just hit that wall of "but she's in Street Fighter 5." And I just do not much like Street Fighter 5. It's got a bunch of characters that I think are cool and wish were in games I'd like to play, but SF5 itself just does not work for me personally.

Also, it was a stark reminder of just what a godsend Guilty Gear Strive's netcode has been. Because oh boy, not a single one of my matches today felt half as smooth as 95% of my Guilty Gear matches have. Even the best have had a lot of visible rollback happening, and the worst had serious slow-down and frame drops.

Oh well. Here's to hoping that Capcom does better with Street Fighter 6, I suppose. I did like both SF4 and SFxT more than SF5, so they should be capable of it. I just don't know whether to expect it to actually happen.

[Cespenar]

So, played a decent amount of Jupiter Hell to render a more accurate judgment, if there are any DoomRL fans out there.

Pros:
-A better aim/range/cover system than doomrl
-Somewhat more varied enemies and weapons
-An interesting new stealth/hacker style avenue of gameplay

Sideway movements:
-Some streamlining and ease-of-use changes that sacrifice some of the nitty-gritty

Cons:
-Pretty much everything else: graphics, lighting, music, everything about level design, etc. are a step back from DoomRL, for some reason.

[PoeticallyPsyco]

Just beat Wandersong. Not a mechanically challenging game by any means (one or two of the platforming segments did take me a few tries, though), but it's carried by the characters and dialogue. Plus, you can dance in any conversation or cutscene.

[zlefin]

Been playing some older cheap things I'd collected from steam sales over the years.

Trying out Railroad Tycoon 3 atm. It seems ok, but not great, so far. In some ways it feels worse than the old Railroad Tycoon 1, and I'm not entirely sure why. One possibility is that I'm not getting as many opportunities to really make choices. There are definitely some minor annoyances that weren't present back then; like in the original, you just paid right of way, so while it was expensive to build through some parts of cities, you still could. Whereas this one has buildings that can get in the way, so you have to thread through the cities just right in order to fit your terminals in. It's not really interesting gameplay at all, it's just annoying because sometimes the randomly placed houses simply make it hard to get the track through. I guess it's still a form of choice/planning, but it feels more like an annoying one than a thoughtful one.

Or maybe it's all just nostalgia for the old game. (It helps that I played it back on the Amiga, and the Amiga had great graphics for its day)

[Brookshw]

Decided to do a TWW2 run, Moulder/Legendary. Don't normally like legendary but figured what the heck. 15 turns of beating on Kislev, followed by 40 turns of fighting Norsca. Somehow I'm the shield of civilization keeping the barbarians at bay, where's a diplomacy bonus when you need one?

[Rodin]

Finally beat Maddening difficulty in Fire Emblem Three Houses. I now have the shiny gold title screen, and while it's a simple cosmetic reward I really feel like I earned it. That took a LOT of grinding to keep my levels relevant for the final missions.

I also managed to maintain my "semi-Classic" gameplay right up to the final boss. I might have been able to beat the boss without losing any characters, but I was nearly out of Divine Pulses and honestly just wanted to be done with it. There was a strategy available to me of using hit-and-run tactics to whittle the boss down over about 30 turns but I ultimately decided to just bum-rush with all my units and rely on the Casual Cushion to guarantee a victory.

If I try to do a Classic Maddening Run there is no way in hell I'm doing Blue Lions again. A bit of Googling reveals that they're considered one of the hardest routes and have the hardest final stage, which I can believe. That stage had a permanent 7% chance to lose a character as the boss had the range to hit the entire screen. It also took multiple attempts for me to get past the final set of reinforcements, a group of 4 mages that dropped Meteors and Boltings over a 15 square radius. They did so on the first turn they arrived, and they could not be stopped by plugging up the tile they entered the map from.

That final map hurt so much that I don't ever want to play it again. Which I think was my opinion after doing the map on Hard, but Maddening was infinitely worse.

Overall though, Maddening was a little bit of a letdown in terms of difficulty. After the early game hell most of the difficulty comes from the reinforcements being able to attack after spawning and the experience gains being cut in half. The former could be dealt with once you learned where the reinforcements came from and the latter could be solved by grinding the lategame. My characters ended the game in the level 46-48 range, which is at least equal to my non-Maddening runs and maybe even a little higher since I concentrated the experience onto a smaller core army.

[Cespenar]

Overall though, Maddening was a little bit of a letdown in terms of difficulty. After the early game hell most of the difficulty comes from the reinforcements being able to attack after spawning and the experience gains being cut in half. The former could be dealt with once you learned where the reinforcements came from and the latter could be solved by grinding the lategame. My characters ended the game in the level 46-48 range, which is at least equal to my non-Maddening runs and maybe even a little higher since I concentrated the experience onto a smaller core army.

Yeah, I've been at the mercy of the "spawn just about anywhere and attack en masse at the same turn" trick in FE5 plenty as well, and was thinking that it only featured in the earlier games. It's surprising to hear, now, that even the newest Fire Emblems keep pulling that BS.

[Anteros]

I don't personally have a problem with it. It's supposed to simulate combat. Sometimes the enemy gets reinforcements, or you can't predict their troop placements. It rewards cautious gameplay and keeping your units in formation. Sure, it's frustrating when someone spawns on top of your unit and kills them, but that typically only happens if you're overextended.

Plus, Fire Emblem is usually mind-numbingly easy anyway. It's a "strategy" game that's intentionally designed so that you can go through it without ever losing a unit. Your troops basically always have an enormous advantage over the enemy.

[Rodin]

Yeah, I've been at the mercy of the "spawn just about anywhere and attack en masse at the same turn" trick in FE5 plenty as well, and was thinking that it only featured in the earlier games. It's surprising to hear, now, that even the newest Fire Emblems keep pulling that BS.

They've been getting better about it. Awakening had reinforcements not attack on the same turn on Normal mode as a mercy feature for new players, then had them act on the same turn on Hard and up. Fates had reinforcements not act on the same turn, but balanced it out with some particularly unfair reinforcement spawns. Three Houses did a good job of warning you about most reinforcements and did not have them act on the same turn.

However, the game was not designed with Maddening in mind (as it wasn't released until hardcore fans complained about how easy 3H was) and as such they seem to have struggled with coming up with ways to make the game hard enough without totally redesigning the systems. Their solution appears to have been to do the following:

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1)Enemy units get a +5-7 level boost over the base game.

2) Player experience cut in half, to make it difficult to close that level gap.

3)Enemy units get an extra couple abilities over the base game.

4) Bosses are no longer bound to their throne/fortress tile.

5) Reinforcements get to act on first turn again.

6) Additional reinforcements are added.

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Most of those are fine and didn't cause me a problem. There's exactly one stage where the boss being able to move matters. You can limit your class size and level grind to keep the experience gap manageable. Extra abilities are generally not a problem once you've seen them and are prepared for them.

The exception to all this is the reinforcements that spawn and act. In some cases I know where they're coming from because they spawned in that way on Hard. In others I would get wiped out and use a Divine Pulse to go back a turn or two to reposition against the incoming reinforcements.

And in others there's nothing to do but reset the map. Like having Hilda spawn in with two Pegasus Knights in your start zone at a time it's very likely your slow casters are in range to get mauled. The final Blue Lions mission has the biggest middle finger raised to the player though. Because that map does not have reinforcements in the lower difficulties. So even an experienced player isn't expecting them.

However, I am a paranoid man. I was expecting the unexpected wave of reinforcements. And I used the traditional way of dealing with it - getting your most useless character to park their fat butt on the stairs to prevent the reinforcements. I know that this works because the Golden Deer version of that map does have reinforcements on lower difficulties, and you can halt them by using the time-honored tactic.

Maddening though? Multiple enemy units walk through your units despite not having the Pass skill. You can't be in the room with them or they will kill you. You can't be in the next room, because they have Meteor and Bolting. The first time I ran into this I lost 4 characters. Even prepared I couldn't stop from losing people until I pulled back halfway across the map. It's the most ludicrously unfair thing I've seen in any Fire Emblem game. In order to survive you need to know the exact tile they spawn in on, and know the exact condition for spawning them, and count out some 15 tiles away from their spawn points. All while sitting under the artillery fire that is the final boss who can decide to crit-kill one of your casters at any time. It's insane.

[PoeticallyPsyco]

Been playing an early-access rogue-lite called Mech Armada. It's pretty fun; you purchase new parts at random for your mechs, and try to assemble a viable squad out of those parts. Using a part that's already on a fielded mech doubles its energy cost, and you can only have a limited amount of energy in stored, so you can't just field a legion of the same super-mech by just saving up, you have to create a synergistic team that can deal with the various monsters and bosses you come up against.

The parts are divided into bodies, transportation, and weapons. A single mech needs one body, one transport, and can have 1-3 weapons depending on the specific body. However, while most of the bodies could be useful, some just aren't very viable, especially compared to the competition. There's no reason to pick the Regenerator, Kamikaze, Tuple, or Offroader, for instance, unless your other choice is another from that list. That's ultimately pretty minor, though; I just unlocked the last of the bodies yesterday, and the list caps at 31, so a little padding is understandable. All in all it's an impressive amount of customization, and the random nature of your options encourages experimentation. It's also fun that you can change the coloration and names of your mechs.

My last run had Porcupine (counter-attacked for 80% of incoming damage and could create tiles that increased armor; using the Missile Head body gave him an weak 3rd attack for cheap, too), Dragon (Gatling gun, another machine gun, and a gun that increased the target's armor by another 5), Cover'n'Fire (granted +2 armor to adjacent mechs, sniper rifle, and gun that boosted the target's damage for each hit), and Bandage Bot (deployed a disposable flying drone that could heal mechs). The strategy was to turtle up, making Porcupine and occasionally Dragon essentially immune to damage by stacking up armor on them, while Dragon gunned down high-health enemies and the rest picked off enemies that either started at lower health or lost health attacking Porcupine. Bandage Bot's drone mostly used its superior mobility to grab side objectives, but having low health made it a priority target for enemies, so I was also able to sacrifice it to shore up the shield wall on maps without a good bottleneck.

[Cespenar]

I don't personally have a problem with it. It's supposed to simulate combat. Sometimes the enemy gets reinforcements, or you can't predict their troop placements. It rewards cautious gameplay and keeping your units in formation. Sure, it's frustrating when someone spawns on top of your unit and kills them, but that typically only happens if you're overextended.

Plus, Fire Emblem is usually mind-numbingly easy anyway. It's a "strategy" game that's intentionally designed so that you can go through it without ever losing a unit. Your troops basically always have an enormous advantage over the enemy.

I kinda agree with your first paragraph, but they are more arguments for just having unforeseen reinforcements in a battle. Not the particular point of the reinforcements having basically a double turn (entering the map, and then acting).

And yeah, I know they are pretty easy on Normal, but most fans slap some kind of difficulty on there anyway, and those kind of gotcha deals then really starts to stick out. Like, either have them appear without foreknowledge but don't let them act, or drop some big hints.

They've been getting better about it. Awakening had reinforcements not attack on the same turn on Normal mode as a mercy feature for new players, then had them act on the same turn on Hard and up. Fates had reinforcements not act on the same turn, but balanced it out with some particularly unfair reinforcement spawns. Three Houses did a good job of warning you about most reinforcements and did not have them act on the same turn.

Eh, fair, then. Those were the kinds of things I was thinking about, and I didn't play any FE until Shadow Dragon, so.

[Anteros]

And yeah, I know they are pretty easy on Normal, but most fans slap some kind of difficulty on there anyway, and those kind of gotcha deals then really starts to stick out. Like, either have them appear without foreknowledge but don't let them act, or drop some big hints.

To be honest, I gave up on the series when it became a dating simulator. I haven't played one since Radiant Dawn...or maybe Path of Radiance? Whichever one was more recent. So if the modern games have significantly harder difficulties I wouldn't know. I do know that with the games I actually played it was terribly easy. They give you units that can literally solo maps and any difficulty comes from intentionally handicapping yourself by fielding weaker units. I actually did a Hector only "challenge" of Hector Hard Mode in FE7 and the only actual challenge involved was finishing maps before he'd run out of durability on his axes. It sounds like the modern games did introduce a bit more challenge from reading other's posts, but I really can't get past the dating simulator aspects enough to be interested.


Speaking of things that were surprisingly easy, I just got my first official win in Rimworld. I played Cassandra on Losing is fun. I've heard stories about how difficult it is, and she did throw quite a lot at me towards the end, but by that point I had stockpiled so much wealth it didn't matter. It didn't get difficult until the very end, and since I knew the game was ending I was able to just burn through my resources with abandon. Also, having 300+ trained attack animals trivializes every raid. The most difficult part was figuring out how to actually load my bound Labrador that was with me all game onto the shuttle. Well...that and the sheer boredom of waiting for 15 days for the game to end.

[Lord Raziere]

Okay, I'm happy to say the Borderlands the Pre-Sequel is the first Borderlands game I've ever beaten! its fun playing sniper even if the later levels get a little too hectic for doing it properly. The RK5 plane boss was the most unfair of the boss fights, having way too many adds, leading me to repeatedly dying more than the final boss with how they swarmed me. the final boss itself was beatable once I figured out the way to avoid damage was to constantly jump everywhere to avoid the aliens meleeing me to death. also apparently I decided to start on a pretty mechanically unusual and hard game to start Borderlands on given the air and gravity mechanics that were in constant effect throughout. as for the story Zarpedon felt more sane and sympathetic than Jack which fits how this is the story of how he became the villain of 2, given the state of Pandora, it kind of makes sense why she'd decide it would worth be destroying Pandora to save the universe: its what, home mostly to a bunch of crazy people, corrupt corporate goons and bandits? compared to the rest of everything? Yeah not exactly a place anyone would miss. but yeah I plan on playing Borderlands 2 next. looking forward to playing Zer0.

[Cespenar]

To be honest, I gave up on the series when it became a dating simulator. I haven't played one since Radiant Dawn...or maybe Path of Radiance? Whichever one was more recent. So if the modern games have significantly harder difficulties I wouldn't know. I do know that with the games I actually played it was terribly easy. They give you units that can literally solo maps and any difficulty comes from intentionally handicapping yourself by fielding weaker units. I actually did a Hector only "challenge" of Hector Hard Mode in FE7 and the only actual challenge involved was finishing maps before he'd run out of durability on his axes. It sounds like the modern games did introduce a bit more challenge from reading other's posts, but I really can't get past the dating simulator aspects enough to be interested.

FE always had some kind of bonding system, I think, but I don't know if they doubled down on that aspect in the more recent games. But understandably it could stick out, I guess, if the main game is that challengeless to begin with.

I personally like to always slap some kind of Ironman on FE games, since it just elevates the drama and gives much more importance to the already numerous cast, IMO.

[Rynjin]

Okay, I'm happy to say the Borderlands the Pre-Sequel is the first Borderlands game I've ever beaten! its fun playing sniper even if the later levels get a little too hectic for doing it properly. The RK5 plane boss was the most unfair of the boss fights, having way too many adds, leading me to repeatedly dying more than the final boss with how they swarmed me. the final boss itself was beatable once I figured out the way to avoid damage was to constantly jump everywhere to avoid the aliens meleeing me to death. also apparently I decided to start on a pretty mechanically unusual and hard game to start Borderlands on given the air and gravity mechanics that were in constant effect throughout. as for the story Zarpedon felt more sane and sympathetic than Jack which fits how this is the story of how he became the villain of 2, given the state of Pandora, it kind of makes sense why she'd decide it would worth be destroying Pandora to save the universe: its what, home mostly to a bunch of crazy people, corrupt corporate goons and bandits? compared to the rest of everything? Yeah not exactly a place anyone would miss. but yeah I plan on playing Borderlands 2 next. looking forward to playing Zer0.

I would potentially warn you off of playing Zer0, especially if you've already sniped your way through the entirety of another game.

I've played through all of the Borderlands games except the Pre-Sequel, and Borderlands 2 in particular I've done a playthrough with every character (and playthroughs 2 and 3 with some).

Zer0 may be the weakest character in the entire franchise, in every sense of the word, at least in my experience. In terms of character he's boring, with nothing really to him at all. The novelty of the haikus wears of pretty quick, after which you're left with someone who speaks in a monotone and has barely any reaction to anything going on.

In terms of mechanics, he has possibly the worst action skill in the series, aside maybe Brick's Berserker rage from 1. By about level 20 the damage boost it gives is entirely irrelevant because the health of enemies has inflated so much. His skill trees are also just...Budget Mordecai (from the first game), and are worse in almost every conceivable way, including the dedication of an entire tree to the janky ass melee build Mordecai could spec into with a few skill points. He doesn't even make a particularly good sniper when specced for it, in my experience, because he requires either getting kills fast to get more kills (antithetical to the sniper playstyle) or using his action skill, which maybe gives you one kill per use at low levels but starts to fall off at level 15-20 when you'll decoy up and pop somebody in the head with your strongest rifle and only take half their HP. It doesn't help that I mained Mordecai in 1, who was way better at just doming people for oneshot kills because he could do stuff like bypass enemy shields to attack health directly.

A fair few of the BL2 characters are either very weak, or very bland IMO. Salvador is the absolute worst offender, whose entire playstyle is "shoot gun" and then "shoot two guns for a bit", but at least he's also extremely strong to make up for it. By far my least favorite character personality/backstory of any character in the series though.

Axton's character is a bland, whitebread version of Roland, but mechanically he's fun and ironically probably makes a better sniper than Zer0 does, because he doesn't rely on his action skill and killstreaks to get damage, so he doesn't have to play the Slag and Frag tango as much as Zer0 does.

Maya is fine, in every aspect.

Krieg is possibly the most fun to play character in the franchise? His lolrandom humor has still aged better than a lot of the jokes in 2/3 and he has a surprising amount of character depth with his "inner voice". Mechanically he has the most unique playstyle(s) of the entire cast. I'd say only Amara (from 3) matches him in fun factor.

And Gage is really fun if you're fine playing on easy mode and ripping and tearing through the game with kind of a "greatest hits" of other characters' skills with none of the chaff. Deathtrap is a fun, meaty action skill and she's great at just providing a power fantasy of a character.

It might seem weird I'm harping on the personalities of the characters so much in a mindless looter shooter, but 2 is loooong and you're going to hear these voicelines A LOT. It's as important of a consideration as the character's skills and playstyle, IMO. "Can I deal with this character's ****ty voicelines because I find their playstyle fun enough?"

[Lord Raziere]

man I just find the doing headshots with sniper rifles satisfying more than any of the other guns.

I've already gotten to Sanctuary and level 9 in borderlands 2 with Zer0. he's fine, had to adjust for his ability so that I use it to avoid danger while I reload and recharge shields, but it works and I think it has a faster recharge than the ice disc. as for his voice lines, I'm okay with them dude I wanted to play him because is a corporate ninja/sniper. and if he's weak then he is just like Deprived from Dark Souls 3 which I started playing dark souls with on my first run, so if I go through and defeat people with precise shots and using an ability thats considered "weak" and win, that just means more was achieved through my own efforts rather than something being given to me. maybe its just not your playstyle, because I was having fun and getting a lot of headshots with him. playing Aurelia did prepare me for quick close range headshots though, those are always tough yet cool to pull off, especially to get a kill to revive, or jumping and getting a snipe off in midair so you can land and get back to cover.

that and while I have Borderlands 1 as an xbox 360 game on my self, but I am not particularly interested in it, I played it long ago sure, tried to be the berserker class but I played it real badly because I was younger, but the game seems kinda plain and boring compared to the ones that came after now and my tastes have changed for more precision and skill involved, so I don't have it on my computer, which what I use to play games with now, don't really have a console other than a Switch anymore.