What Are You Playing 5: New Thread+

[Cespenar]

If anything I'd say Righteous is, at least very very early game, substantially worse. Kingmaker at least was mostly outdoors, with some variety in enemy types. The first chunk of Righteous is a Dungeon, followed by fighting through a keep (so above-ground dungeon). I really am talking about just a sequence of rooms containing a small number of baddies guarding some inconsequential bit of loot.

You're probably right, as I didn't see Righteous yet. But the 50-odd encounters of 5 kobolds each down in the caves were also a pretty taxing on my early-game enthusiasm, in Kingmaker.

Wow, my experience with WOTR seems to be entirely contrary to what you guys are experiencing. Or, to be more precise, I am reacting to the game very differently. I am having a blast and the only real hangup that gets me is the chose of the developers to make you pick your feats before your class features (which locked me out of getting selective channel or boon companion when I would otherwise qualify for it). But, I am already level 9 and into the second Act of the game. World (Wound) exploration!

More power to you for enjoying something. It's just that after decades of D&D, my palate has changed more (both in computer and tabletop gaming) to fewer but more relevant/dramatic/narratively-important combat encounters.

[DeTess]

So survived Tower Defense (no buildings destroyed but many crusaders are mourning), but can't figure out how to attack the Garrison.


Online says I need to have saved Thieflings in Market, but no idea who they were.
Could be a bug or I'm lost.

They're a small group of NPC's you'll run into when exploring the market place top to bottom, and they'll give you some very important information.

[Eldonauran]

More power to you for enjoying something. It's just that after decades of D&D, my palate has changed more (both in computer and tabletop gaming) to fewer but more relevant/dramatic/narratively-important combat encounters.

Sounds like this game won't be what you are looking for in a D&D experience then. I get my narrative/dramatic encounters at the table, where combat is not so easily handled by computers and things run at a more leisurely pace. I don't expect PC gaming to do any of that.

[Triaxx]

I was pretty okay with Icewind Dale being mostly combat oriented. Largely because it was the third piece of the puzzle with Planescape being more heavily Story-based and Baldur's Gate being a mix of the two. I
IWD really sated my desire for more combat without ruining the experience of BG.

[warty goblin]

Sounds like this game won't be what you are looking for in a D&D experience then. I get my narrative/dramatic encounters at the table, where combat is not so easily handled by computers and things run at a more leisurely pace. I don't expect PC gaming to do any of that.

For me at least I don't object to the combat focus, so much as the encounter design. Opening a door, killing two unchallenging dudes in a rectangular room, and then opening the next door to kill three slightly different unchallenging dudes in a slightly different rectangle is not particularly compelling design.

For a counterpoint, I'm reminded of the Dungeon of Naheulbeuk, which I finished up not that long ago. That also used hand designed levels, but gave most of its fights some story significance, a clever environmental twist, or both. The Blackguards games did much the same, being much more weighted towards fairly hard encounters with lots of environmental interaction.

To be clear I'm having a fair amount of fun with Righteous, and it's a good game I a lot if ways. But the encounter design is really, really basic. Parts of it feel like they could be generated by a fairly unsophisticated proc gen algorithm.

[Eldonauran]

To be clear I'm having a fair amount of fun with Righteous, and it's a good game I a lot if ways. But the encounter design is really, really basic. Parts of it feel like they could be generated by a fairly unsophisticated proc gen algorithm.

Have you made it out of the first Act yet? I've run across no less than four seemingly random 'encounters' while exploring the Worldwound (within the first few hours of being there) that threw some new, interesting, and somewhat challenging creatures at me and that tied directly into the narrative of where I was and what I was doing (being vague due to possible spoilers). The first Act in Kanabras centers around demons and a ruined city that you are pushing through to liberate it. To be perfectly honest, the first five to six character levels feel like an extended prologue to the greater story.

[tonberrian]

I don't like the random encounters starting in Chapter 2 of wrath of the righteous because so many of them have Nabasu in them. I don't like having levels drained permanently and then spending real money to buy diamond dust to fix it. I get that it's a minor expense but that's my line in the sand. If a random encounter taxes me money I don't like it.

That said, I'm having a lot of fun otherwise.

[Rynjin]

I turned on conditions being healed on rest a while back. Conditions in the tabletop are balanced around them being a rarity, and being counterable at the levels they start becoming common. You encounter your first Nabasu like 5 levels before Death Ward is a thing, it's stupid.

Permanent conditions are meant to be a "prep check". Either you thought ahead or get ****ed. Shoving the encounters in that early, before you even have access to the preparations that make them manageable, isn't how they're meant to be designed.

[tonberrian]

I turned on conditions being healed on rest a while back. Conditions in the tabletop are balanced around them being a rarity, and being counterable at the levels they start becoming common. You encounter your first Nabasu like 5 levels before Death Ward is a thing, it's stupid.

Permanent conditions are meant to be a "prep check". Either you thought ahead or get ****ed. Shoving the encounters in that early, before you even have access to the preparations that make them manageable, isn't how they're meant to be designed.

Death Ward doesn't even have a mass version (in 3.5 it's an 8th level spell). I shouldn't have to ward up my entire party with death ward, all the time, to protect against random nabasu.

[Anteros]

Well. First impressions of Wrath of the Righteous. That writing and voice acting....yikes. It's actively offensive how bad it is. I had to mute the voices. I'm not actually sure the writing is any worse than normal RPG stuff, but the voice acting was so terrible it had me cringing at basically every line. It's almost like they made a conscious decision to make every character sound as stupid as possible in a misguided effort to make their voices unique.

Gameplay is fine so far. I had tried turn based mode, but there's just way too much combat to bother keeping it on. I don't have 9 years to play this game. I'll probably turn it back on for interesting encounters, but so far it's just been boring, small encounters without challenge like what people here said. I'm not too far in though.

Overall it's very slightly better than Kingmaker so far. I'll keep plugging at it for a bit and see how it goes. If the writing or encounters don't get more interesting by the second act I'm dropping it though.

[Rynjin]

I had an immediate visceral reaction to how bad Seelah sounds in her first encounter but the voice acting takes a huge tick up by the second time you meet her, so I'd chalk it up mostly to a bad take.

The only character who I just HATE to hear speak is Woljif. Mostly because he calls you "chief" and in a really grating way. I'm pretty sure it's intentionally annoying.

[Anteros]

It's not just her that bothers me. The guard captain who is the very first voice you hear in the game is also terrible, and so is Lann. The only one of the introductory characters who has decent voice acting is Camellia. Even the main character voice options are just terrible. Real people do not sound like Shakespeare in the park actors who are intentionally trying to be hammy.

If it's an intentional design choice it's a bad one, and if it's not intentional...how did they not know how bad it sounds? My enjoyment of the game increased immensely once I turned off the voices.

[Rynjin]

and if it's not intentional...how did they not know how bad it sounds?

They're a tiny, TINY company working with amateur voice actors because it's all they can afford. I think it turned out fine all things considered.

[Eldan]

So, finished Slay the Spire once.

Bit disappointed really? It turned out to be way shorter than I expected, for a 20 dollar game? I get that I can play through it again on some kind of harder mode and with a new character, but three chapters of like ten fights each is really not much. Especially since it doesn't look like it would be that hard to make it longer and invent a few more enemy types and bosses. This took me like a week of evenings.

[Rynjin]

So, finished Slay the Spire once.

Bit disappointed really? It turned out to be way shorter than I expected, for a 20 dollar game? I get that I can play through it again on some kind of harder mode and with a new character, but three chapters of like ten fights each is really not much. Especially since it doesn't look like it would be that hard to make it longer and invent a few more enemy types and bosses. This took me like a week of evenings.

So $20 for a week of entertainment and you've only beaten 1/4 of it...seems like good value to me. I have...66.6 hours in the game, personally, added to off and on since I bought it a few years back. I'd call it money well spent.

[Anteros]

They're a tiny, TINY company working with amateur voice actors because it's all they can afford. I think it turned out fine all things considered.

That would make sense for kingmaker, but their last game sold over 1 million copies. If they didn't hire talent, it's because they chose not to do so.

[Rynjin]

That would make sense for kingmaker, but their last game sold over 1 million copies. If they didn't hire talent, it's because they chose not to do so.

Ehhh, that's not really accurate. It's clear most of the resources were put into other aspects of the game. 1 million copies is great, but it's not going to turn a tiny studio into an industry powerhouse overnight, not by a long shot. They probably couldn't afford union prices for the majority of the cast.

I also think you're way too hard on the voice acting as a whole. Some of the performances are particularly bad (like Minagho) but most are at least passable, and some really stand out as ****ing excellent (like Staunton Vhane).

[Triaxx]

So, finished Slay the Spire once.

Bit disappointed really? It turned out to be way shorter than I expected, for a 20 dollar game? I get that I can play through it again on some kind of harder mode and with a new character, but three chapters of like ten fights each is really not much. Especially since it doesn't look like it would be that hard to make it longer and invent a few more enemy types and bosses. This took me like a week of evenings.

If you only beat 3 stages you're not quite done.

[Eldan]

Is there actual new concent, or is it just replaying the same content with higher numbers? Because some googling lead me to believe it was the second, which I don't have the slightest interest in.

[Anteros]

Ehhh, that's not really accurate. It's clear most of the resources were put into other aspects of the game. 1 million copies is great, but it's not going to turn a tiny studio into an industry powerhouse overnight, not by a long shot. They probably couldn't afford union prices for the majority of the cast.

I also think you're way too hard on the voice acting as a whole. Some of the performances are particularly bad (like Minagho) but most are at least passable, and some really stand out as ****ing excellent (like Staunton Vhane).

I made the decision to mute voices before I met either of those, and I haven't looked back. Maybe I'm being harsh, but bad voice acting is one of the things that absolutely ruins a piece of media for me. I can't ignore it, even if I try. I've heard passion products from high schoolers with higher quality than Seelah's or whoever did the main character's voices. There's a reason that there are only like 5 mods out for the game and 2 of them are voice packs.

Is there actual new concent, or is it just replaying the same content with higher numbers? Because some googling lead me to believe it was the second, which I don't have the slightest interest in.

There is a tiny 4th stage where you fight the heart you can unlock, but that's all. I was also disappointed with how short the final release ended up being, but 20ish hours for 20 dollars is a pretty good deal in the end. Not every game is going to be a 100 hour time sink and that's ok. They seem to be more focused on releasing new ways to play the existing content than making actual new content. Personally I don't have much interest in it, but others do.

[Spacewolf]

Is there actual new concent, or is it just replaying the same content with higher numbers? Because some googling lead me to believe it was the second, which I don't have the slightest interest in.

Depends how much you've actually seen? All three stages have a rotating cast of bosses and the four classes have completely different play styles. On the rougelike genre I'd say slay the spire is a game I'll play when I have afew spare hours as opposed to Hades which I've beaten a load more times even though it actually has less variation in bosses.

[Lord Raziere]

So I started a new game of Civ 6 with one of the recommended starter civs, Rome. and its going a lot better. without me trying to focus on the Mongol gimmick, I was free to instead learn the game and the basic rotation/balance one needed to figure out to keep things working. I'm not focusing on any one method, but just making a functional civilization at the easiest difficulty. I didn't intend to start conquering, but when other civs started making fun of me for not having a good military I was like "okay I'll make troops to defend myself" then the Netherlands which had expanded to be right next my borders started getting on my case for having troops near the border when THEY had troops near their border to me so they were clearly going to do SOMETHING, but I didn't go for fighting them directly, instead I attacked this city-state that was kind of troublesome since they were in the way of the gauls who got unlucky in the placement and were basically trapped on the north end of the continent, I defeated the city state, but I remembered what happened last time I tried to keep a city-state without considering its loyalty with my mongol playthrough, so I instead destroyed it then built my own city where it used to be because I could see it would be too much of a problem to hold.

Of course then nertherlands got mad because it invested so many envoys into that one and like declared war on me, and I wasn't interested in conquering Netherlands yet, its a bit powerful and I'm trying not to focus too much on my military this time around, so it was pretty much a defensive conflict. my new city still had potentially troublesome loyalty but I figured out how to keep it, but not before I decided to declare war on Gaul because it was clearly trying to turn my new city I built against me, so there I was fight a war on two fronts, and soon managed to capture two cities, one from each and they agreed to cede them to me in exchange for peace, but not before a world conference was called and I was put in an emergency military situation where I was keep my city against all four powers I knew of ganging up on me....kind of. its the easiest difficulty so as long I have walls and something to defend myself I'm fine from them sending a few units after me. but the result is that while Nertherlands and Gaul in the West are dealt with, Vietnam and Scythia in the east and south are still at war with me. and now its in the renaissance era, oh and some towns are just plain defecting to me because apparently I'm playing a good enough culture game. cool.

anyways I think to keep peoples loyalty consists of of a few things: the loyalty stat, which needs monuments, amenities which needs things to relax with and such, and religion which I suspect might play a role in it as well, because I notice that something being religiously converted in Civ 6 is also in danger of being culturally converted from what little I've seen. thus I send missionaries to keep my cities spiritually loyal to me as well. But yeah, I went from having three cities in the middle to taking up the top-left quarter of the map and one of the cities from like scythia also defecting me simply because I paid attention to the cultural aspect and just took things piecemeal, paying attention to my money rather than trying to make the biggest horde possible to kill everyone which only drained my money dry.

So yeah, playing a more generalist civilization to start with in Civ 6 is a good idea that I should've done from the start. not sure if I'll actually win given that I'm being so generalist about it, that I'm not really leading in anything but domination which more experienced Civ 6 players seem to look down on/not like for some reason from what I've read online.

[Starbuck_II]

They're a small group of NPC's you'll run into when exploring the market place top to bottom, and they'll give you some very important information.

Found him, used evil aligned dialogue for extra loot.

I'm going for Lich so I like that some evil options are get more stuff not kill indiscriminate. Smart evil not stupid evil.


Inside Grey Garrison now, Seelah's horse (I stayed Paladin till 5th for horsie) looks so great with horse barding I found.
The horse's AC is acceptable, but nothing like Cam's almost 30 AC unbuffed.

I keep expect Seelah to be my tank (she has the BAB/Str, but armor/shield is not enough till we get more magic gear), but Cam is truly coming into her own (she lacks full BAB but with +6 Dex 3/4th BAB, she is decent).
I wonder should I dip Shaman or Witch for Iceplant hex for Seelah? untyped +2 AC is sweet, but it will delay her Paladin progression.

[Zevox]

With Tales of Arise I'm now in the midst of the fourth area, about level 26-27, and honestly, I feel like my opinion of the game is mostly dropping.

Combat is largely fine or even fun against regular enemies in isolation, but I feel like I'm blowing through CP very fast as I go through areas, resulting in me needing to fast-travel back to a campfire to rest a lot, and then avoid enemies as I return to where I was. Avoiding taking damage just isn't feasible when you only control one character our of four, battles get very chaotic with four PCs and 3-5 enemies typically, and Alphen deals self-damage with his boost attack even if you don't use his other flame sword moves (which, indeed, I've taken to ignoring). Battles with bosses (or the large Zeugle enemies that serve as optional side-quest mini-bosses), meanwhile, are just a slog, as they're damage sponges you can never get into hitstun - and even when you break their cores (which themselves are massive damage sponges), the knockdown doesn't really last that long. I think I'm going to start turning the difficulty down against those, because it's just not fun, especially since I'm often burning through most of my healing items (and certainly all of my Orange Gels, the one item that restores CP) as well in order to beat them.

Story-wise, well, spoilers:

Spoiler

Show

The first couple of areas are fine - very straightforward with the villainous evil Renan Lord oppressing the Dahnan slaves, but they work. The third one I thought would have potential when I got there and found a place where it didn't seem like the Dahnans were being oppressed or enslaved at all, but it just wound up feeling disappointing, and like a bit of a missed opportunity. I thought it might turn out to be a more subtle Lord, who got most of the Dahnans to work for him willingly while hiding whatever the worst things he was doing were. But nope, he was someone who actually didn't care about the whole Crown Contest and had mandated Dahnans be treated equally to Renans - which was also neat for showing that some of the Renans embraced that, thus making Shion no longer the only Renan who isn't an evil monster. But then you get to what actually happens instead of you needing to overthrow the evil Lord, and it's a whole lot of "really?" The evil vizier's plan made no sense, I don't know how he pulled it off in the first place or why Kisara's brother wasn't trusted when he tried to expose it previously, and oh boy the whole sequence with Kisara, her brother, and Dolhim at that lake was just... ugh. Kisara's brother is an over-dramatic idiot for committing suicide that way without even telling you the name of the guy behind the plot, and while I get her Kisara being emotional right after that happened, Dolhim and her acting as if it's some horrible thing that his decision to start treating the Dahnans as equals was just because he, personally, couldn't stand to hear people suffer due to a traumatic backstory moment of his own rather than out of pure, undiluted idealism is just all kinds of dumb and disappointing.

And for the fourth area, which I haven't finished yet, I've gotten to the, for lack of a better term, T-Rex boss fight, and am still finding some disappointment. Okay, they seemed to want to use this area to show some Dahnans being less than pure, with this area's rebel group having a disturbingly cruel, self-centered leader, and most of his followers nonetheless following happily, I get that. But then they just all fall victim to the Lord's plot (and it's unclear to me how exactly that worked, but I haven't beaten the T-Rex boss I mentioned that comes right after it yet), so that plot thread goes up in smoke, and it's immediately followed by.... Rinwell and Law. Okay, Rinwell having a vendetta against this Lord for killing her parents is all fine, and helps explain why she's been the most vehement Renan-hater of your group. But then Law getting in the way of her trying to attack the Lord is... why? Just why? Rinwell is totally right to call him out on his BS there, but again, the game's acting like the fact that she doesn't have the purest, most idealistic motives ever just then is terrible, and she therefore needs to be stopped from lashing out at the Lord in anger and hatred... even though your group is totally going to go after that Lord and almost certainly kill her anyway, especially after she just liquefied dozens of people before your very eyes. What the hells?

Yeah, at this rate, this might end up being the most disappointing Tales game story ever. ...that I play enough to speak to, anyway, I never did finish Zestiria or Xillia 2, so I can't speak to those, and of course there's a number of entries in the series I haven't played at all, mostly the older ones. Though I guess I should add that things aren't all bad, as indicated above I can see what they're going for at times with the plot, it's just not coming together; and characters, outside of moments where they spontaneously become dumb like those, are largely good. I like Alphen and Shion and how their relationship is developing, and their companions are all good too. It's just, well, the basic plot isn't anything to write home about, and wow, parts of it are getting really, astoundingly dumb from time to time.

[Cespenar]

Is there actual new concent, or is it just replaying the same content with higher numbers? Because some googling lead me to believe it was the second, which I don't have the slightest interest in.

Oh man, that sounds unfortunate. In the future, I'd suggest looking for the roguelite tag for a hint for that kind of gameplay cycle, since it has been the staple of many contemporary games since some time.

[LibraryOgre]

Infusion specialization does make it worthwhile. Once you can ignore 2 points of burn, composite kinetic blades are deadly, but you need to be using almost exclusively fire if you want to keep touch attacks.

She's a kineticist, now, with Water (Cold) and Earth... cold is her go-to, but Earth is a good pounder (and trips, and with Improved Trip, she gives AoO to all her nearby allies). However, it also means that she doesn't have any composite blasts, even if it is thematically appropriate for the ice-queen made of metal. ;-)

Probably scary. I don't use the goblin. Never found him really interesting.

Aside from my core team, I use the others only when necessary for their quests (or when combining quests), or one of my primaries runs off to do gods know what. Myself (Archaeologist 6/DD 8/Arch +), Valerie (fighter 4/Kinectist +), Amiri (Barbarian+), Harrim (cleric +), Tristan (Cleric 6, Emp. Sorcerer 4, Mystic Theurge+), and Ekundayo (Divine Hunter Paladin 1/Ranger +) with Okbo).

Divine Hunter Paladin is AWESOME on Ekundayo. You have to buy Heavy Armor proficiency, but it lets you take advantage of the Paladin armor, and that gives him 3 smite evils per day. Combine with the Necklace of Double Crosses and Devourer of Metal and he's artillery like you wouldn't believe.

[Rodin]

Oh man, that sounds unfortunate. In the future, I'd suggest looking for the roguelite tag for a hint for that kind of gameplay cycle, since it has been the staple of many contemporary games since some time.

In fact, Slay the Spire invented (or at least popularized) the modern format of "Ascensions" in deck-builders, where increasing maluses are placed against the player to make things more difficult. It worked well for Slay the Spire and less well for some of the other games that copied the format.

[Eldan]

Oh man, that sounds unfortunate. In the future, I'd suggest looking for the roguelite tag for a hint for that kind of gameplay cycle, since it has been the staple of many contemporary games since some time.

I mean, I quite enjoy several other roguelites. This one was just very short.

[Man_Over_Game]

I mean, I quite enjoy several other roguelites. This one was just very short.

If you don't mind the Arkham-Asylum gameplay, Hand of Fate might tide you over. It's a third-person action game where you draw cards from your deck to create an "overworld" that you travel on, with each card being a different encounter. You'll swap bad weapons in your deck for better ones, unlock multiple-encounter quests over time, and it's overall good way to kill some time.

[Eldan]

Thanks, I'll look into it.

I think what my problem was with Slay the Spire, thinking about it more (and comparing, to, say, Hades) was that by the third act, I felt I was just hitting my stride a bit. Deck's working okay, just a few more cards to kick out, let's see what fun upgrades are coming, oh, it's over. I really wish there was another two acts or so to really get into the deckbuilding.