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

[Anonymouswizard]

Hong Kong and Dragonfall are both way better than Dead Man Switch anyway. Hong Kong is by far the most polished, but Dragonfall's plot is probably a little better. Either way, they're both great games.

Yes, so much better than Dead Man's Switch. I just wish that the cyberware vendor wasn't tucked away in a far corner of the map, otherwise I have no complaints.

Indeed. It's a shame that they won't continue the Shadowrun titles. Battletech was good too, but well-written proper cyberpunk RPGs aren't really dime a dozen to begin with.

They're not? That's a shame, Dragonfall is probably the best RPG I've played in years, and as you say well written real cyberpunk ones aren't exactly common.

Already planning my character for Hong Kong, think I'll go for a Decker instead of a Street Sam there.

[LibraryOgre]

Finished Oblivion, except for a few minor quests I don't have the patience for. By the end of the game, I was just making myself invisible and speedrunning dungeons. I need to find something else to play for a while.

[Erloas]

Yeah, but again, let me point direcly at the full-head covering-pumpkin-head accesory, the witch's hat, the full-facial tattoos in Phantom Doctrine, which is LITERALLY a spy game. Not exactly unusual, either.

It's not a hill they can really sensibly say they can die on with that excuse.

If that is all "it's a bit of fun" why can't nonhuman skin colours ALSO be a bit of fun?

I don't know that game at all. But I can't think of anything at all like that in BattleTech or X-Com. Though with the newest X-Com they did embrace the alien side of things a lot more. BattleTech though mostly takes itself seriously. But if a game is just ignoring the 4th wall with any regularity, then go ahead and do crazy colored skin. I've seen those sorts of color choices in a lot of games. I'm leaning towards non-standard colors being more often available than not with the game's I've been playing lately, but it's been a non-issue for me so I can't exactly remember.

Indeed. It's a shame that they won't continue the Shadowrun titles. Battletech was good too, but well-written proper cyberpunk RPGs aren't really dime a dozen to begin with.

Where did you hear that? I haven't heard anything of the sort and a quick search didn't bring up anything.
From the lore/setting side of things too, Catalyst released the 6th edition of Shadowrun last year, and given their slow but steady releases of everything they do, that's as alive and supported as anything else.

[factotum]

But if a game is just ignoring the 4th wall with any regularity, then go ahead and do crazy colored skin. I've seen those sorts of color choices in a lot of games.

It's kind of weird that Japanese RPGs will have every colour combination for hair (and often skin) under the sun, while offering almost no customisation for the appearance of your main character--do Japanese games players just not care about that?

[Cespenar]

Where did you hear that? I haven't heard anything of the sort and a quick search didn't bring up anything.
From the lore/setting side of things too, Catalyst released the 6th edition of Shadowrun last year, and given their slow but steady releases of everything they do, that's as alive and supported as anything else.

Can't really link anything right now, but I remember them saying in an interview that they were pretty fatigued with Shadowrun and will need to do a lot of other stuff before coming back to it, and it would be probably 3D when they do return.

As with anything on the internet though, take what I say with a generous helping of salt.

[Zevox]

It's kind of weird that Japanese RPGs will have every colour combination for hair (and often skin) under the sun, while offering almost no customisation for the appearance of your main character--do Japanese games players just not care about that?

I would assume many of us don't, yes. Certainly for JRPGs such as the Tales series, where the lead character is their own person every bit as much as any other and not any kind of player avatar, that's entirely the preference for obvious reasons. Why it's not more common to include appearance customization options when the lead character is of the silent protagonist variety I don't know, but then the silent protagonist thing hasn't ever really made that much sense to me anyway. Even there though, I do like that the defined appearance gives the character at least some amount of identity, however minimal it may be.

[Lord Raziere]

I mean there are some games where the JRPG's have customization in more recent years. DB Xenoverse 1 and 2, Code Vein, Jump Force....but I wouldn't say its something I've seen often, or done all that well in JRPGs.

[Zevox]

I mean there are some games where the JRPG's have customization in more recent years. DB Xenoverse 1 and 2, Code Vein, Jump Force....but I wouldn't say its something I've seen often, or done all that well in JRPGs.

Uh, I don't know what Code Vein is, but aren't Xenoverse and Jump Force fighting games, not JRPGs?

[Razade]

Uh, I don't know what Code Vein is, but aren't Xenoverse and Jump Force fighting games, not JRPGs?

Code Vein is an action RPG with a lot of Dark Souls trappings. Like, it's just a Dark Souls game with anime stylings. It's not a JRPG by any metric any more than Xenoverse or Jump Force are.

[factotum]

OK, this is annoying. I've got to a bit in DQ11 where I have to find a mermaid's lost love and bring him back to her. The only problem is:

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It's blindingly obvious the guy has been dead for years and the mermaid just doesn't realise how long she's been pining for him. This is made even more obvious by the story you hear an old woman tell of a famous fisherman who fell in love with a mermaid and was imprisoned until they died. However, my characters are too thick to make this logical leap themselves, and the game doesn't allow me to make it for them, so I have to go through the whole rigmarole of finding and helping the character with a similar name, only to find it's the wrong person after all...

This is one instance where the highly linear nature of JRPG storytelling is quite annoying. A western RPG would generally either make the outcome of this quest less obvious, or would allow you to side-step parts of it if you figured it out for yourself.
(I apologise in advance if anyone knows the game and knows this quest isn't as obvious as it seems on the surface!).

[Razade]

It is that obvious but the resolution and impact the quest has doesn't filter out quite like you're expecting it to and skipping parts wouldn't really make sense. I did say a while back that Dragon Quest 11 wasn't going to break any grounds in the storytelling department. I wasn't kidding about that. It's as generic "Save the World Fantasy" as you can get. They don't really pull any wild cards, save like...one or two...and they're generally insignificant to the overall story. They're just interesting character quirks.

I also generally push back on the idea that Western RPGs have less obvious quest set ups. I can't think of many Western RPGs whose quests weren't about as obvious especially ones like Elder Scrolls or Fallout, where "they're dead/crap went down and the resolution isn't what you'd intend/OH CRAP BANDITS" is almost the answer to every single quest in all of those games. Even more so in that most quests in the open world style RPGs that the West has become known for...don't generally feed into the wider narrative. There is no wider narrative, they're all disconnected from each other unless they're part of a quest line. I'm not saying which style is better, but I am saying that both styles have problems in the way they handle quests and both are just as guilty as "the outcome is obvious" as the other and often hand you, or the other characters, the idiot stick.

[Zevox]

It is that obvious but the resolution and impact the quest has doesn't filter out quite like you're expecting it to and skipping parts wouldn't really make sense. I did say a while back that Dragon Quest 11 wasn't going to break any grounds in the storytelling department. I wasn't kidding about that. It's as generic "Save the World Fantasy" as you can get. They don't really pull any wild cards, save like...one or two...and they're generally insignificant to the overall story. They're just interesting character quirks.

Eh, the big mid-game event is quite a surprise for such an otherwise-traditional story. But yeah, as I've said before, Dragon Quest is a very traditional JRPG series, down to the story, so there's not a ton of surprising twists to be had. It's just that the main story in this one is done pretty darn well overall.

The Mermaid event you're referring to though, yeah, it's overly-obvious, for sure. I found it hard to be bothered by it because I was so surprised and happy with how they handled the Mermaid's dialogue, though. She's not just rhyming, she's speaking in verse. Couplets of iambic heptameter, IIRC. Gives her dialogue the sort of sing-song quality that is quite appropriate for a Mermaid but rarely captured in these kinds of games.

[Razade]

Eh, the big mid-game event is quite a surprise for such an otherwise-traditional story. But yeah, as I've said before, Dragon Quest is a very traditional JRPG series, down to the story, so there's not a ton of surprising twists to be had. It's just that the main story in this one is done pretty darn well overall.

Without spoiling it, I didn't find it all that surprising. The clues were there and it's pretty trope-y, especially for more modern JRPGs. Dragon Quest has never been subtle at the best of times. It certainly wasn't, at least to me, in DQ11.

[factotum]

I found it hard to be bothered by it because I was so surprised and happy with how they handled the Mermaid's dialogue, though. She's not just rhyming, she's speaking in verse. Couplets of iambic heptameter, IIRC. Gives her dialogue the sort of sing-song quality that is quite appropriate for a Mermaid but rarely captured in these kinds of games.

Oh sure, that part was pretty good, and I don't know if it was a nod or not, but calling a mermaid with a Cockney accent "Michelle" just reminded me of the British soap "Eastenders" and I found that quite funny! TBH, if they'd dropped the old woman's story and just had us go straight to finding her son I'd have been OK with it, because that then wouldn't imply everyone in my party had the logical deduction skills of an average potato.

[tonberrian]

It should be pointed out that there are two ways to resolve the mermaid quest in DQ11. It's obvious the setup what the answers are, but there are two of them. Neither is a good answer, though -

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Lying to her about the sailor's death will make her wait for him forevermore, but telling her the truth causes her to commit suicide by turning into bubbles. Either way the story advances. Now, in the third part of the game, you can return to her island, and she'll be alive again, this time falling for Kai 2 electric boogaloo. This definitely happens if you lie to her, but at least in the original release it also happened if you told her the truth, though that might have been a bug.

[factotum]

Yeah, I got to the end of the quest now, and I actually liked the ending I got--it was moving in a way I wasn't expecting when I started out. It's weird how such an obviously cartoonish game manages to tweak my heart strings.

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Needless to say, I told Michelle the truth (what kind of monster would do otherwise? ) so she committed suicide by walking into the sea after being on land. I really hope that doesn't get reversed, bug or not--had enough of characters dying and then being brought back for no good reason in Trails of Cold Steel!

[Razade]

Yeah, I got to the end of the quest now, and I actually liked the ending I got--it was moving in a way I wasn't expecting when I started out. It's weird how such an obviously cartoonish game manages to tweak my heart strings.

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Needless to say, I told Michelle the truth (what kind of monster would do otherwise? ) so she committed suicide by walking into the sea after being on land. I really hope that doesn't get reversed, bug or not--had enough of characters dying and then being brought back for no good reason in Trails of Cold Steel!

I can't honestly remember, but it makes sense why it would be reversed. I won't spoil anything but shennanigans go down. The end of the "main story" isn't really the end of the whole story. Beating the "final boss" is really more like...the mid-boss with how much story is left afterwards. Everyone calls it post-game but considering there's almost 80 hours of it with another end boss at the end and a whole new story, I really hesitate to call it a post-game.

[Zevox]

I can't honestly remember, but it makes sense why it would be reversed. I won't spoil anything but shennanigans go down. The end of the "main story" isn't really the end of the whole story. Beating the "final boss" is really more like...the mid-boss with how much story is left afterwards. Everyone calls it post-game but considering there's almost 80 hours of it with another end boss at the end and a whole new story, I really hesitate to call it a post-game.

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It actually doesn't make any sense for the time travel to bring back the Mermaid - she dies before the moment you return to you (which is just before the party goes to Yggdrasil). It should reverse all of the devastation from the villain winning there, but not anything that happened before it.

[Razade]

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It actually doesn't make any sense for the time travel to bring back the Mermaid - she dies before the moment you return to you (which is just before the party goes to Yggdrasil). It should reverse all of the devastation from the villain winning there, but not anything that happened before it.

Ahh...

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That's me forgetting the timeline. I guess you're right.

[Dire_Flumph]

After over 30 runs, finally beat Hades for the first time with the shield. Looked around for suggestions on a 2nd weapon to try then realized with horror you can *block* attacks with the shield. Now I'm wondering if instead of a 2nd weapon I should go back and learn the 1st one correctly.

Feeling kind of dumb.

For reference, mainly used the ice turret boon from Demeter, joined with Doom on the special and the invincibility call from Athena.

[Anonymouswizard]

So in addition to Dragonfall on my days off, I've been playing The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass on my way too and from work (key worker yo). I have realised one thing about the Temple of the Ocean King.

It's realised exactly what annoys me about Spirit Tracks.

So for the few who don't know, the TotOK is a central dungeon with no associated item that you come back to after every main dungeon in order to get the location of the next plot coupon, getting slightly further each time. It has a time limit mostly, there are areas the clock doesn't tick down) before it starts draining your health, and every time you return you have to run the previous floors again (unless you use a warp point to go to half way through, which unlocks half way through the game).

And I love it. The entire temple is designed so that floors get easier to run after completing dungeons. It also means that, unlike Spirit Tracks with it's four separate sections to the Tower of Spirits, I get six proper, fun, if not particularly hard dungeons. The story might be a little bit weaker, but I don't really play Zelda games for the story as much as the dungeons.

[DemonicAngel]

After over 30 runs, finally beat Hades for the first time with the shield. Looked around for suggestions on a 2nd weapon to try then realized with horror you can *block* attacks with the shield. Now I'm wondering if instead of a 2nd weapon I should go back and learn the 1st one correctly.

Feeling kind of dumb.

For reference, mainly used the ice turret boon from Demeter, joined with Doom on the special and the invincibility call from Athena.

Should probably look at skelly's directions when you pick up a new weapons, lots of important stuff there.

[Anteros]

After over 30 runs, finally beat Hades for the first time with the shield. Looked around for suggestions on a 2nd weapon to try then realized with horror you can *block* attacks with the shield. Now I'm wondering if instead of a 2nd weapon I should go back and learn the 1st one correctly.

Feeling kind of dumb.

For reference, mainly used the ice turret boon from Demeter, joined with Doom on the special and the invincibility call from Athena.

To be fair, it's not like anyone could have predicted that a shield can block attacks. 😂

[Dire_Flumph]

To be fair, it's not like anyone could have predicted that a shield can block attacks. 😂

Yeah, I saw the "after you block" references in boons, but I assumed it was like Diablo where it just gave a % chance as long as you weren't attacking or something. I've been practicing with Bull Rush more and I feel like I get the shield better now.

[warty goblin]

Working on the holiday sale game haul:

Immortal Realms: Vampire Wars This is a completely acceptable, but in almost no way outstanding, TBS in the vein of Age of Wonders about vampires and the wars they war in an immortal fashion. There's some good ideas; I quite like army movement being restricted to provinces, and using a pretty restrictive AP system for interacting with the map. Basically each hero unit gets 3 AP a turn, and moving, fighting, recruiting and so on all take an action. This gets a bit into an idea I've found interesting for some time; namely making player intervention into the game a resource itself. Generally I like this idea as a method to reduce micro, but the strategy layer is simplified enough there isn't really anything to micro, so it just lends turns a natural sort of pace and structure. The tactical battles achieve the lofty height of "just fine" with the most interesting thing being the ability turn leaders into speed demon murder-machines. Quite appropriate for a game about vampires. Speaking of which, the game certainly leans into its theme. Your only resource is blood. Towns and cities generate blood each turn based on their population, in what I can only assume is the world's messiest tax collection system. You can also harvest a town by just draining everybody dry to give your economy a one-time literal blood transfusion. Since this kills most of the population, you can't bleed the population through taxes, at least until the human meatbags breed some more.


Zombie Army 4 I skipped Zombie Armies 1 - 3, but Tom Chick gave this a very interesting review, so I thought I'd check it out. It hits that perfect level of camp, where you know this is ridiculous, the devs know this is ridiculous, but the game and characters take themselves seriously and don't descend into fourth wall breaks and so on. When there is a joke in the game, it's not exactly subtle, but you do have to pay attention to get the gag, which is a lot more fun than just having the game tell you how silly this whole thing is. It also leaves the gameplay free to be a seriously hardcore zombie mashathon. Expect to explode all the heads. Since this uses Rebellion's rather pornographic x-ray head explosion camera, expect to explode heads in extreme detail. Which is really part of the joke, since there's something inherently ridiculous about emphasizing this one kill all that much, when you just killed like 400 other zombies. But the game doesn't tell that joke too much, so it's still a treat and reward for a good shot. There's a progression system, but it's mostly character perks and gun upgrades, and thankfully there's absolutely no randomized loot or crafting. This is a startlingly good thing, and probably the most fun I've had in a straight up shooter in ages.

[Anteros]

I've been playing around with the Thorium mod for Terraria. It's quite good. I tried the cataclysm mod first, and it also seemed quite good, but changed the game a bit too much for my tastes. Thorium feels like a natural extension of the base game, while still adding a ton of new content to make things fresh. I'll probably try Cataclysm after I finish the Thorium run...either right away, or in a few months.

[Zevox]

Continuing to go through some holiday gift games, I went into Super Mario 3D All-Stars - specifically, the one of the three games that I'm pretty sure it's been the longest since I last played, Super Mario Sunshine. Which I quite like, personally. I always had the impression that it doesn't have as high a place in the esteem of most Mario fans, but I've always found it quite enjoyable hosing things down with FLUDD, to say nothing of the mobility of the secondary nozzles. And the platforming in it is honestly quite good too - the "secret" areas where you lose FLUDD and just have to do regular platforming to reach a Shine Sprite are honestly some of the highlights of the game for me.

I did forget how hilariously easy the final boss is, though. It's barely a fight - you just avoid the bosses' attacks briefly while circling around the area to the next platform (which are out of range of the Bowsers' attacks), shoot up with the rocket nozzle, and ground pound, repeat five times until the platforms are all gone. Feels like there should have been a lot more to it - make it a multi-stage fight where you had to use all three of the secondary FLUDD nozzles, and have Junior actually using that E. Gadd Brush during the fight (seriously, it's weird that he's just shooting missiles at you when that thing has been his signature item everywhere else in the game). But oh well, weak ending to an otherwise fun game.

Moving on, I just started the Square-Enix Avengers game that came out earlier this year. And, well, I can see why it didn't exactly get the great reactions that the Arkham or Spider-Man games did. The combat is just kind of bland so far, and even somewhat same-y between characters, which should not be the case. Maybe as I unlock more stuff through the skill system it'll come to feel better, but so far, not impressed. It also feels like there's some flaws that can be laid at the feet of things as simple as sound and visual design - for instance, everyone has one button for light attacks and one for heavy attacks, but if the game hadn't told me which was which, I don't know if I could've told you. There's just not a huge difference in feeling between them when they connect; neither one has enough impact to make me viscerally think "oh yeah, that's a heavy hit." The heavy attacks are probably a bit slower, though I think even that's only on certain characters, and the damage difference between them doesn't even seem to be that big. Aside from when you hold down the heavy attack button for a charged up version, anyway, but it looks like you can also unlock that for light attacks.

It's also painfully obvious even in the single-player that they really wanted to push the multi-player aspect of the game, through the gear system, which looks like something out a mobile game, and is very not welcome as far as I'm concerned. And boy, is it weird on the Hulk, whose gear apparently includes pieces of his skeletal structure, like his ribcage. What the hell, Square-Enix?

Story-wise, well, it does feel like they've got the characters' personalities down, at least, and watching them just interact and be themselves has been nice so far. But the plot just feels like they stole the most generic X-Men plot imaginable... even though the X-Men aren't in this game, so our persecuted people getting random superpowers are now "inhumans" rather than mutants. Yeah, awkward and uninspired there, at least so far, I'm only a little ways into it as yet.

Over on the fighting game front, I reached the point once again where my frustration with Smash Ultimate's awful online exceeds how much I'm enjoying playing it, so I've moved back to Dragon Ball FighterZ, since its next DLC combatant is coming soon. In the process of de-rusting, and I'm trying to learn a new character: SSB Vegeta. Never could quite tell what he was supposed to do before, but with the big buffs he got in the last couple of patches, he finally feels like he has a point, and I've seen a player here or there making good use of him, so I want to give him a go. Trying to do a team of him on point (A assist), Vegito mid (A assist), and Gogeta anchor (C assist). I figured that those assists would be good to help him with a zoning/projectile harassment style of play - or as much of that as is possible in DBFZ, anyway - while also giving the team a nice "Super Saiyan Blue" theme to it. I had thought that since I've played both of the other characters that would make learning SSB Vegeta easier, but unfortunately, my Gogeta is so rusty I'm barely doing better with him than with Vegeta, so for now my Vegito is doing a lot of the work. I think I'll stick with it though, at least until I decide whether I like Bluegeta or not.

[Anonymouswizard]

So got fairly far in Dragonfall now, I'm just a run or two from paying the information broker, and it feels like investing in Quickness is broke.

I'm not going to lie, my 2 INT 1 STR character has been investing in Quickness to an unhealthy degree, to the point where she's good at shooting rifles, dodging, speaking to people, and pracctically nothing else, but I seem to be dodging over 90% of attacks. Maybe my 9 Quickness will mean nothing in the late game, but I'm not really having much trouble at this point.

But overall it's much better than DMS due to that significantly better story and the fact that I have a consistent team. I feel like the nuyen rewards weren't balanced to take take the lack of need for mercenaries into account, seeing as I have 5 Armour, two alphaware legs, and an assault rifle that ignores up to seven points of armour (meaning little can stand up to a full auto burst), the grenade launcher from Blitz's personal mission is just icing on this cake.

I'm already thinking of my character for Hong Kong. To contrast with the relatively optimal human street samurai maybe I'll go for a troll decker (and if that turns out to be too suboptimal, an orc decker).

[Aotrs Commander]

Finished Phantom Doctrine.

I have unlocked the second, extended playthrough, but after 80 hours (as usual, I took my time, I'm not going to start that right away - but I will come back to it sometime. Wandering around, conking people on the head was quite relaxing. (Though I could see why people would complain it's a bit repetative, but I didn't mind that so much.)

I quite liked it.

Some minor niggles.

1) Reinforcements. Phantom Doctrine does a good job, by having infinite waves of reinforcements, of making you not want to get into combat.

By the same token, it means that you only ever get into combat when forced to, and thus basically miss out on a large chunk of the mechanics for the vast majority of the game. I can't help but feel that was a misstep. I think having infinite waves in SOME missions would be fine, but every combat was... Well, you just didn't get into combat.

2) The "random selection of perks." That was just annoying, even if it was "chocie of four." Phantom Doctrine is NOT a game you play ironman on even if you play ironman normally anyway (since it is EXTREMELY unforgiving of mistakes), so all that it achieved was me saving before exiting every mission and reloading until I got what I wanted. Would have been much less painless to just select skills.

3) Ditto the RNG out of the missions. I appreciate, honestly, the missions being not timed and basically more like puzzles. It made for a very nice change. While it still caused me to swear a couple of times, that was just due to me Doing it Wrong, and not because RNG Said So. But outside, the RNG on agent events, where missions appeared and the agent stats themselves was a bit tiresome at times. But again, I worked out how to game it (and unlike some other games I've played recently, loading times were ncie and short.)



Still overall, a nice change of pace, and I will play it again on that second playthrough.

Next... Dragon Commander, I think...?

[Taevyr]

I'm currently building my galactic empire in Planetfall and having a blast: Started out with 2 commanders (Assembly/Voidtech) and an RP angle, and have been adding to the roster based on the factions I absorb/ally and the secondary goals of each planet. It's been a blast.

Most organically developing story I've had in a 4X, barring Stellaris, and far less of a spreadsheet simulator.

I'm already thinking of my character for Hong Kong. To contrast with the relatively optimal human street samurai maybe I'll go for a troll decker (and if that turns out to be too suboptimal, an orc decker).

My first run of SR:HK was with an orc Decker with secondary pistol skills and a smidgen of charisma: it works fine, and just challenging enough. HK is also better at balancing the run rewards: you actually need to watch your nuyen if you want to save for the best cyberware and gear.

I also felt it fit the story well, as HK has more defined protagonists than the previous game. Not extremely so, but your background before the game is roughly predetermined.