What Are You Playing 6: DLCs of Kevin Bacon

[The Glyphstone]

I think what ended up making me lose interest was the same-ness of every game. Sure, it's a roguelike, but your pilot mattered very little, and since the difference between a new and veteran pilot was a relatively small margin, the main gimmick of bringing one pilot back in time to the next playthrough fell flat. At least in FTL, you could achieve permanent progression by unlocking new ships and what not.

[LibraryOgre]

My Camellia build in WotR:

Shaman 1/Master of All Rogue 4/Shaman 16.

Why?

A, it gets her finesse training with Rapiers, and she picks up a couple skill focuses.

And B, I'm gonna have to kill her in a basement one day, and I don't want her to be really good at this.

[NRSASD]

I think what ended up making me lose interest was the same-ness of every game. Sure, it's a roguelike, but your pilot mattered very little, and since the difference between a new and veteran pilot was a relatively small margin, the main gimmick of bringing one pilot back in time to the next playthrough fell flat. At least in FTL, you could achieve permanent progression by unlocking new ships and what not.

Into the Breach and FTL are very, very different despite both claiming to be roguelikes. With Into the Breach, it’s really a puzzle game with a very weird moveset. I agree with you, keeping pilots is thematic but mechanically bland, but you can unlock tons of new teams. Not quite as many as FTL, but still a ton of them. Most of the teams handle very differently too, which is good fun.

After losing 10 times in a row with the Slug A, I tried the Zoltan B and just cleaned house on the first try. Made it all the through the boss fight, only dropped into the red for hull hp once.

[Resileaf]

100%ed Assassin's Creed 2, including all feathers. Wasn't as bad as I thought, the cities are much easier to explore than in AC 1 since the radar map actually shows you that layout of the buildings. Only needed a guide for two of them, one of which was somewhere I didn't know it could appear (I thought the feathers needed open sky above them, but there is one that is under a roof) and the other because it was late and I didn't feel like searching anymore. I feel kinda proud that I didn't need hints or guides to complete the Subject 16 files and figured them out by myself. I remember the last code wheel completely stumped me when I first did it, but I figured it out without help this time.

I had fun for most of the game, except for looting the treasure chests. Those were very annoying to get to. I think some stuff is missing because Uplay doesn't exist anymore, but at least I was able to do the previously DLC missions.

Also as good as the music is, I found that it rarely matched the cinematics. Like when you get your revenge on Uberto, there is no change in music from what was playing previously.

In any case, gonna go through Brotherhood now. Too bad the series is already going downhill.

[Eldan]

Into the Breach and FTL are very, very different despite both claiming to be roguelikes. With Into the Breach, it’s really a puzzle game with a very weird moveset. I agree with you, keeping pilots is thematic but mechanically bland, but you can unlock tons of new teams. Not quite as many as FTL, but still a ton of them. Most of the teams handle very differently too, which is good fun.

After losing 10 times in a row with the Slug A, I tried the Zoltan B and just cleaned house on the first try. Made it all the through the boss fight, only dropped into the red for hull hp once.

I think my problem is not how much stuff you can unlock, it's frequency. In FTL, you often get a new weapon every other fight and shops are relatively commmon. In ITB, you get new weapons after completing an entire island, if you can afford them. Plus in FTL, you can easily get a few more points of reactor and you usually have several weapon spaces and upgrade slots are extra, so if you find some cool new upgrade, you can just slot it in and try it out. In ITB, you have 4-6 weapon slots, which you also need for upgrades, and often, you can't use a cool new weapon you find, because you'd have to take your main weapon off your main fighter mech and you don't have enough power anyway, power cores are very rare. The first few new ships you unlock in FTL are also really easy and come more or less automatically. While in FTL, I usually have to set up an entire run just to get as specific achievement and then probably abandon it, because setting up the enemies in a specific way means that I then probably lose badly. So there's just generally much less experimentation and less feeling of progression.

[zlefin]

That sounds powerful on the surface, but consider that you're spending 8 actions to temporarily buff one out of your six characters. You don't usually have that kind of time to prep for a fight unless you have a very odd playstyle. And how do you sustain that? Early game mana pools were like 30-40 points and you're spending half of that to bless one character. In a game full of long crawling dungeons and no ways to restore mana without leaving to rest.

Magic was powerful, but mana pots were extremely rare and you had to actually consider how you spent your mana if you didn't want your casters to be useless for the last 3/4ths of any dungeon. Unless you cheese it by constantly leaving to rest and re-entering I suppose. But at that point you may as well just use the built in cheat engine to get infinite mana.

Well, it's been awhile, so I don't remember the finer details. I just remember that it was brutal. Maybe I just never got far enough in the game for it to stop being brutally powerful. It certainly meant that any individual fight could be trivial; and fights in outside areas where you could rest were easy.

I do remember it was worth having people start with 3 levels in both magic categories.

As to action economy; in the early game it was spending like 4 actions to get one guy maxed out, then that one guy can solo the fight. Later on, it's a bit pricier mana-wise, but that full set of buffs still wasn't too expensive to cast; and really the mass haste/slow aren't as important. The mass bless/curse was sufficient on its own; sometimes bless alone would be sufficient for the weaker fights. With the entire party being heavy casters; you could go a long way while casting a mass bless every fight.

[Zevox]

I just completed the DLC for Cuphead, "The Delicious Last Course." And yeah, it was more Cuphead - very good stuff. I don't know if it was just unfamiliarity with it, but it was a heck of a lot harder than the re-run of the game itself I did a bit over a month ago. The final boss in particular took me a couple of hours of attempts.

There was one point in particular that I do have to criticize, though: in the boss fight with plane-flying dogs, the final phase has the screen getting flipped on its side and upside-down, and the controls becoming screwy in the process. That's a form of difficulty I really don't appreciate. When you're making things hard because it's difficult for me to control the game itself, that's not fun or a good form of challenge, it's just incredibly annoying and frustrating.

On another note, they just dropped the update that adds rollback netcode to the re-released versions of Persona 4 Arena Ultimax yesterday, so I know what I'll be playing next! Looking forward to revisiting one of my favorite fighting games of all time now that it'll actually have good online.

[warty goblin]

Played the tutorial and first mission of Hard West 2, a sort of story driven weird west tactics rpg.

The immediate urge is call it an XCOM-alike, but this feels incorrect, because the game is structured completely differently. You get 3 AP, shooting revolvers costs 2 AP, rifles cost 3. Also there's no ovetwatch, no reloading, and every time one of your dudes kills somebody they get all their AP back. This works an unlimited number of times per turn.

This seems to give fights the tempo of an action movie, where you mow down dudes left right and center until you run into somebody tough enough to slow your roll. More importantly it makes battles very fast, with almost no downtime. I don't think it makes them easy, healing is hard, cover is very effective, and enemies hit very hard. It just means that most of your time isn't spent watching dudes shuffle around from chest high wall to chest high wall, it's spent masterminding a multi-move murder mambo.


Also the first mission is on an insect-legged train going nonstop to hell. I really don't know what more you could want.

[Anteros]

Played the tutorial and first mission of Hard West 2, a sort of story driven weird west tactics rpg.

The immediate urge is call it an XCOM-alike, but this feels incorrect, because the game is structured completely differently. You get 3 AP, shooting revolvers costs 2 AP, rifles cost 3. Also there's no ovetwatch, no reloading, and every time one of your dudes kills somebody they get all their AP back. This works an unlimited number of times per turn.

This seems to give fights the tempo of an action movie, where you mow down dudes left right and center until you run into somebody tough enough to slow your roll. More importantly it makes battles very fast, with almost no downtime. I don't think it makes them easy, healing is hard, cover is very effective, and enemies hit very hard. It just means that most of your time isn't spent watching dudes shuffle around from chest high wall to chest high wall, it's spent masterminding a multi-move murder mambo.


Also the first mission is on an insect-legged train going nonstop to hell. I really don't know what more you could want.

This actually looks pretty good. Unfortunately I'm swamped with things to play right now and have no time to actually play them, so it gets added to the list of games I want to play one day but probably won't ever make it around to.

[Cespenar]

Played the tutorial and first mission of Hard West 2, a sort of story driven weird west tactics rpg.

The immediate urge is call it an XCOM-alike, but this feels incorrect, because the game is structured completely differently. You get 3 AP, shooting revolvers costs 2 AP, rifles cost 3. Also there's no ovetwatch, no reloading, and every time one of your dudes kills somebody they get all their AP back. This works an unlimited number of times per turn.

This seems to give fights the tempo of an action movie, where you mow down dudes left right and center until you run into somebody tough enough to slow your roll. More importantly it makes battles very fast, with almost no downtime. I don't think it makes them easy, healing is hard, cover is very effective, and enemies hit very hard. It just means that most of your time isn't spent watching dudes shuffle around from chest high wall to chest high wall, it's spent masterminding a multi-move murder mambo.

Also the first mission is on an insect-legged train going nonstop to hell. I really don't know what more you could want.

The first game was good too, with a spot on atmosphere. I'll definitely have a look at this as well.

(Un?)fortunately, I'm also playing another XCOMlike in the name of Troubleshooter, a korean title which puts a crazily detailed, almost D&D-like feat combo system on top of a XCOM chassis, resulting in a pretty outrageous customization range.

It's like an XCOMers dream out there right now. Which I truly enjoy.

[Anteros]

Speaking of tactical games, I picked up Symphony of War on sale. It's...surprisingly good so far. I had originally written it off, but after seeing the overwhelmingly positive reviews I decided to try it. It's something like Fire Emblem meets FFT meets Der Langrisser. I'm not too far in yet, but the class and customization options look promising, and the dialogue hasn't been actively painful. Characters are a bit generic, but they talk like real people for the most part, which goes a long way. I'm playing on hard, and I've actually lost 2 units due to lazyness/bad tactics on my part which is refreshing as well. The large army sizes and perma-death for non main characters means that there are actual consequences for making a bad decision, but they're not so game ruining that you feel like you need to restart the map like Fire Emblem.

Again, I'm not far in, and I'll play more tomorrow but so far I hesitantly recommend it to anyone who likes games like Fire Emblem, FFT, or Tactics Ogre.

Finally played a bit more of this and I have to say that the difficulty is in a nice spot. At least if you play on the hardest setting with perma-death on. I feel like it might get a bit snowbally if you play without perma-death and your units level up enough, but I'm not far enough in to say how much that kinda stuff matters. It is a little annoying how easy it is to lose individual units if the RNG decides to single them out, but I like the fact that I can't go through every battle without losing anyone, even if I play perfectly. Despite looking like Fire Emblem on the surface, this isn't a game where you can put a unit alone on the front line and have them solo the entire enemy turn. You have to actually use tactics.

The story has been a bit generic so far, and dialogue is hit or miss, but it's still better than your average indie game. No worse than a typical Fire Emblem really.

The first game was good too, with a spot on atmosphere. I'll definitely have a look at this as well.

(Un?)fortunately, I'm also playing another XCOMlike in the name of Troubleshooter, a korean title which puts a crazily detailed, almost D&D-like feat combo system on top of a XCOM chassis, resulting in a pretty outrageous customization range.

It's like an XCOMers dream out there right now. Which I truly enjoy.

Oh no. Now I have to add yet another game to the list....and I have a bunch of work this week and family coming into town...I'm never going to get to them all. First world problems for sure.

[MCerberus]

The only thing I'd wish for in terms of turned-based games is for the advance wars remakes to get released.
Does anyone know if it's shelved or is there an new release date?

Also a proper iteration of Mutant: year 1 into a sequel would be lovely.

[Mechalich]

(Un?)fortunately, I'm also playing another XCOMlike in the name of Troubleshooter, a korean title which puts a crazily detailed, almost D&D-like feat combo system on top of a XCOM chassis, resulting in a pretty outrageous customization range.

I played a ton (150+ hours) of Troubleshooter. It's really good, but not without flaws. For one, the crafting system is totally messed up, and basically doesn't come into play until the endgame, when you have to replay a bunch of missions you can trivially destroy in order to farm materials. Second, and probably more important, is that the huge level of customization leads to exactly the sort of OP-build constructions you'd expect in the late game which will, if you look them up, render basically ever single mission except the last one and the DLC ones (which feature a huge jump in difficulty based on the expectation that you've combo-ed up super builds on all your characters) pushovers. Third, the game has some underdeveloped sub-systems, like the pets and robots features, which can soak up a lot of effort for no useful reward.

Still, the early and mid-game portions are excellent. Regrettably the game only represents about 1/3rd of the total planned story and it's not clear if the rest will ever happen.

[Zevox]

The only thing I'd wish for in terms of turned-based games is for the advance wars remakes to get released.
Does anyone know if it's shelved or is there an new release date?

It's indefinitely delayed. It's complete, no reason they wouldn't release it at some point, but Nintendo decided not to release it when it was originally scheduled due to real-world events this year. No new release date has yet been set.

On another note: big news out of Evo last night, Dragon Ball FighterZ is getting rollback netcode! Albeit with a caveat: only on the PC, PS5, and X-Box Series X/S versions. The latter of which don't exist yet. They said players of the existing console versions will have an "upgrade path" available, but haven't elaborated yet. Fingers crossed that this upgrade path will be free and not require you to re-purchase DLC you already bought, because otherwise... well, screw 'em, if they try to pull that, is my feeling on the matter. PC players of the game are sitting pretty though.

[Cespenar]

I played a ton (150+ hours) of Troubleshooter. It's really good, but not without flaws. For one, the crafting system is totally messed up, and basically doesn't come into play until the endgame, when you have to replay a bunch of missions you can trivially destroy in order to farm materials. Second, and probably more important, is that the huge level of customization leads to exactly the sort of OP-build constructions you'd expect in the late game which will, if you look them up, render basically ever single mission except the last one and the DLC ones (which feature a huge jump in difficulty based on the expectation that you've combo-ed up super builds on all your characters) pushovers. Third, the game has some underdeveloped sub-systems, like the pets and robots features, which can soak up a lot of effort for no useful reward.

Still, the early and mid-game portions are excellent. Regrettably the game only represents about 1/3rd of the total planned story and it's not clear if the rest will ever happen.

Oh, it definitely has a lot of unironed quirks. The whole game, in fact, looks like the work of an unhinged person, at times, if you look at how needlessly overdesigned and underpolished it is. But the potential is pretty staggering.

Your points are also pretty accurate -- I tend to balance things up by not grinding nor farming materials at all, period, and also limiting myself to not think too much about optimization. Like, putting together 1-2 fun combos for a character is nice and all, but it gets a bit suffocating if I find myself fidgeting around feat creation trees for an hour straight.

Similar to D&D/Pathfinder, actually. Some optimization is nice and fun, doubly so if you come by them yourself, but full op really sucks out all the fun, again doubly so if you read them from a guide/video.

[Mechalich]

Your points are also pretty accurate -- I tend to balance things up by not grinding nor farming materials at all, period, and also limiting myself to not think too much about optimization. Like, putting together 1-2 fun combos for a character is nice and all, but it gets a bit suffocating if I find myself fidgeting around feat creation trees for an hour straight.

I did pretty much the same thing, and with some decent tactical acumen was able to get through every part of the game except the final mission, which absolutely demands your party members average multiple kills per round against extremely tough enemies fully capable of one-shotting you. That's when I went and looked up a bunch of builds.

[Anteros]

Oh, it definitely has a lot of unironed quirks. The whole game, in fact, looks like the work of an unhinged person, at times, if you look at how needlessly overdesigned and underpolished it is. But the potential is pretty staggering.

Your points are also pretty accurate -- I tend to balance things up by not grinding nor farming materials at all, period, and also limiting myself to not think too much about optimization. Like, putting together 1-2 fun combos for a character is nice and all, but it gets a bit suffocating if I find myself fidgeting around feat creation trees for an hour straight.

Similar to D&D/Pathfinder, actually. Some optimization is nice and fun, doubly so if you come by them yourself, but full op really sucks out all the fun, again doubly so if you read them from a guide/video.

See, optimizing my people into powerhouses is the entire source of fun for me. I like it when a game challenges me and expects me to get good at it to win. I do agree that looking up builds is anti-fun though. If you're going to follow a step by step guide without adding anything of your own you may as well just watch someone else play the game.

[halfeye]

If you're going to follow a step by step guide without adding anything of your own you may as well just watch someone else play the game.

People actually do that don't they? I don't understand why they do.

[Saambell]

People actually do that don't they? I don't understand why they do.

For me, it depends on the game, and what I get out of winning. The main game I look up guides for is a Tower Defense Mobile Gacha game, where attempts per day are limited and rewards are important. If I am struggling to win at a challenging stage, I will 100% look up a guide, especially if its a stage I need the rewards from. The better guides simply state roles you should bring, and its up to you to pick characters of said roles, meaning each person will have a slightly different run. But if its a low stakes game, and unlimited attempts are available, and I get little from winning, I will just likely muscle through it. However the thing I hate most is lack of progress. If I am slamming my head against a brick wall of a challenge over and over, I am either closing down the game and abandoning it to the depths of my pile, or looking up a guide if applicable. I got plenty of games, no reason to keep playing one which shoves a challenge all in my face when I can just grab another from the 50+ I got still sitting waiting unplayed.

Unless you meant "watch others play a game rather then play yourself" I do the same, especially when I suck at said game but am interested in the story or such. Like 99% of Fromsoft's content. Luckily for me, even if I later play a game I watched someone else do, my highly differing skill level means my run of say, Dishonored will be very different from the run I watched.

[Mechalich]

For me, it depends on the game, and what I get out of winning. The main game I look up guides for is a Tower Defense Mobile Gacha game, where attempts per day are limited and rewards are important. If I am struggling to win at a challenging stage, I will 100% look up a guide, especially if its a stage I need the rewards from. The better guides simply state roles you should bring, and its up to you to pick characters of said roles, meaning each person will have a slightly different run. But if its a low stakes game, and unlimited attempts are available, and I get little from winning, I will just likely muscle through it. However the thing I hate most is lack of progress. If I am slamming my head against a brick wall of a challenge over and over, I am either closing down the game and abandoning it to the depths of my pile, or looking up a guide if applicable. I got plenty of games, no reason to keep playing one which shoves a challenge all in my face when I can just grab another from the 50+ I got still sitting waiting unplayed.

With regard to Troubleshooter, the biggest issue is the unreasonably massive difficulty jump in the final mission. Intuitive builds simply don't cut it anymore. The output level requires combining the games various feat-like abilities, called masteries, into mastery sets, and then discovering high-efficacy combos between those sets, possibly with equipment, in order to hit the necessary benchmarks, which are still high even with OP builds. And there are hundreds of masteries, roughly 150 mastery sets, and dozens of equipment effects. It's very much a slamming your head into a brick wall situation, and minor tweaks won't make a difference. I probably played the mission a half-dozen times before checking for builds online and realizing just how far the optimization potential actually went. But those OP combos are not intuitive at all, being much more of the 'someone built a huge spreadsheet' variety.

Even with high-end builds the final mission is still difficult and has to be approached using good tactics, even as every other mission in the game becomes a comparative cakewalk. It's a real balance problem with the game.

[Form]

See, optimizing my people into powerhouses is the entire source of fun for me. I like it when a game challenges me and expects me to get good at it to win. I do agree that looking up builds is anti-fun though. If you're going to follow a step by step guide without adding anything of your own you may as well just watch someone else play the game.

If you enjoy building out/optimizing your own character, then I understand you wouldn't be very interested in a build guide made by someone else. But others might simply enjoy the action itself and not want to devote a lot of time to optimizing a build. For example, for Grim Dawn I looked up someone else's arcanist build for my 2nd playthrough because I just wanted to be able to get through the game at higher difficulties without first having to waste hours trying to understand the game's system or its synergies in detail. I had a lot of fun using their advice to just laser enemies to death.

I can enjoy building out my own character and optimizing them to some degree, but after a certain point I just give up and just follow someone else's advice for the most part. Others might reach that point later or sooner.

Unless you meant "watch others play a game rather then play yourself" I do the same, especially when I suck at said game but am interested in the story or such. Like 99% of Fromsoft's content. Luckily for me, even if I later play a game I watched someone else do, my highly differing skill level means my run of say, Dishonored will be very different from the run I watched.

To provide another example: I've greatly enjoyed watching others' playthroughs of Undertale to get the story and because of the wholesome vibe of that game, but the gameplay itself does not look like something I'd enjoy. So rather than play it myself, I watch someone else play it instead.

[warty goblin]

I've been continuing my very slow playthrough of Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance (the old one). I remember watching a friend play this when I was like 14 and it was way more violent than anything my parents would let me play, and therefore incredibly awesome.

It is, surprisingly, still pretty awesome. It's kinda simple, you just have attack, block (which is nearly useless), jump and special ability buttons, there's no combos or dodge rolls or invincibility frames. This is fine, I've never liked combos, dodge rolls look dumb, and i-frames are annoying. What it has are extremely satisfying monsters to kill. Giant rats get chopped in half, kobolds go flying, weapons clatter to the floor with that early 2000s enthusiasm for in-game physics, it's great.

And this is probably just the nostalgia talking, but it has a really excellent atmosphere of adventure. Some of it is probably the graphics being detailed enough to be clear and easy to read, but low enough fidelity to still capture the imagination. Some of it is also down to the setup and motivation being just detailed enough so I know what's going on, but without falling into the usual RPG trap of turning into a talk fest for 35 minutes at a stretch and boring me. And some of it is down to little details in the gameplay, like kobold javelin throwers making little formations to bombard you, or there being crates you can push around to block their shots. That's just a cool, thoughtful touch.

[Psyren]

I like it when a game challenges me and expects me to get good at it to win. I do agree that looking up builds is anti-fun though. If you're going to follow a step by step guide without adding anything of your own you may as well just watch someone else play the game.

Following a build still leaves other challenges, like execution and dealing with randomness. Nearly every competitive TCG player (e.g. Hearthstone) is following an existing build, the key is being able to play it well and react to counters. Similarly, every major MMO build has been theorycrafted to the nines, but that doesn't mean everyone can be a mythic raider or top-rank arena.

[Rynjin]

MMOs are a pretty bad example, because there really is no mechanical skill in execution either. Most "Mythic Raiders" just use macros that basically play the game for them.

[PhoenixPhyre]

MMOs are a pretty bad example, because there really is no mechanical skill in execution either. Most "Mythic Raiders" just use macros that basically play the game for them.

That's not really true, at least in the general case. WoW, in some specific instances, does lean very heavily into automation. Other games are not quite the same.

In FFXIV, you can't macro anything (and hope to succeed). And there are no (sanctioned) addons--getting caught using one means a permanent ban. The difficulty isn't really the rotations, and teh fights are mostly scripted. It's executing your rotation perfectly while doing mechanics and compensating for other people not following mechanics.

And there is certainly skill in that. I can't raid because I have neither the time to learn the fights, the interest in wiping a lot, nor the reaction time necessary to execute properly even if I did.

[Taevyr]

Following a build still leaves other challenges, like execution and dealing with randomness. Nearly every competitive TCG player (e.g. Hearthstone) is following an existing build, the key is being able to play it well and react to counters. Similarly, every major MMO build has been theorycrafted to the nines, but that doesn't mean everyone can be a mythic raider or top-rank arena.

Exactly, I'd say it's most comparable to competitive chess. At a certain level, everyone has memorized dozens of standard moves, combinations, blocks, attacks etc, and you know your opponent has done the same. At that level, it's more about being able to blend that knowledge with the skill necessary to adapt it. Knowing and understanding the reasons when you should and should not use a certain move or combination is memorization and rote exercise. Knowing when to break those rules, and doing so effectively, is mastery.

[Psyren]

MMOs are a pretty bad example, because there really is no mechanical skill in execution either. Most "Mythic Raiders" just use macros that basically play the game for them.

Tell me you don't mythic raid without telling me you don't mythic raid.

Exactly, I'd say it's most comparable to competitive chess. At a certain level, everyone has memorized dozens of standard moves, combinations, blocks, attacks etc, and you know your opponent has done the same. At that level, it's more about being able to blend that knowledge with the skill necessary to adapt it. Knowing and understanding the reasons when you should and should not use a certain move or combination is memorization and rote exercise. Knowing when to break those rules, and doing so effectively, is mastery.

Indeed.

[Zevox]

Started back on Persona 4 Arena online today. The rollback update is definitely doing the game good, even some connections the game rated as 0-bar were playing well - though I did have recurring issues with the game disconnecting me, oddly, and judging by one of the lobbies I tried to participate in, I'm not the only one. It's definitely going to take some adjusting to get back into the feel of the game, especially since it's superficially similar to BBTag, but plenty of elements work vastly differently, so I'm getting thrown off by habits from that game at times. Still, having fun. And kind of seeing my own progress as a fighting game player over the years, since it's been since something like 2015 since I last played, and going back now I realize that what I was doing back then was not good. Giving up any semblance of oki for a little more damage with the combo routes I used to do, in a game like this? Oof. Though I guess I didn't make it easy on myself picking Rise as my main, since her good combo routes are certainly on the difficult side. I'm trying my best to work with some easier but less optimal routes that still lead to good situations for now, just so I don't spend forever in training mode before actually starting to play again.

Also started on a game I've been sitting on for a few months now, Triangle Strategy. Which I definitely like so far, combat mechanics seem quite solid for a strategy RPG. It also never quite hit me seeing the trailers just how heavily the visuals are based on older strategy RPGs - for me it most makes me think of Tactics Ogre: The Knight of Lodis, since that's the one I played the most that used this style, but probably the most famous is Final Fantasy Tactics. It's actually kind of weird to have a game look like this but have full voice acting, honestly. Some of the mechanics are based on those too, such as the significance of the direction your units face when their turn ends. Been a long time since I played a game that worked quite like this, and it's honestly nice to do so again.

I can clearly see that what I'd heard about how long the game's cutscenes go on for was not exaggerated, though. I did not expect to play for two hours straight last night and not get to the second fight of the game. And after another few hours today, I only had that second fight (plus one totally optional one once I learned of the practice fights you can have in your camp), and did not reach the third. I'm all for story-centric games putting their focus on the story, but yeesh, I think it's fair to say this one might have some pacing issues.

I'm also curious, is there any way to get an idea which of the game's ideals my Serenoa is leaning towards? I can sometimes tell which one my responses will probably push him towards, but not always, and I've yet to see anything tracking it. Plus sometimes I get a message saying his "convictions have been strengthened" in battle, and I have no idea what direction those are pushing him. Since that's supposed to be a centerpiece of the game, you'd think it would be front and center somewhere.

If you enjoy building out/optimizing your own character, then I understand you wouldn't be very interested in a build guide made by someone else. But others might simply enjoy the action itself and not want to devote a lot of time to optimizing a build.

This was basically my feeling about deck-building in Hearthstone, back when I still played it. I had no interest in making up a deck myself, just in playing the matches, so it was far preferable to go with something I knew worked well because it had been proven to do so. Piloting the deck, not building it, is what interests me in card games. I can easily see that feeling applying to other people in other games where you build out a character, or group of them, or whatever else the game might have you customizing.

[Rynjin]

That's not really true, at least in the general case. WoW, in some specific instances, does lean very heavily into automation. Other games are not quite the same.

In FFXIV, you can't macro anything (and hope to succeed). And there are no (sanctioned) addons--getting caught using one means a permanent ban. The difficulty isn't really the rotations, and teh fights are mostly scripted. It's executing your rotation perfectly while doing mechanics and compensating for other people not following mechanics.

And there is certainly skill in that. I can't raid because I have neither the time to learn the fights, the interest in wiping a lot, nor the reaction time necessary to execute properly even if I did.

FFXIV is definitely a different beast, since mechanics actually matter unlike a lot of MMOs.

[Psyren]

This was basically my feeling about deck-building in Hearthstone, back when I still played it. I had no interest in making up a deck myself, just in playing the matches, so it was far preferable to go with something I knew worked well because it had been proven to do so. Piloting the deck, not building it, is what interests me in card games. I can easily see that feeling applying to other people in other games where you build out a character, or group of them, or whatever else the game might have you customizing.

Don't get me wrong, my inner Johnny does enjoy experimenting within a limited range. For example, the core pieces of Secret Paladin were pretty standard - every single deck would run 2x Sword of the Fallen and 2x each of the stronger secrets like Noble Sacrifice and Oh My Yogg. But from there you would have variants like Libram Secret for more midrange-y staying power with Liadrin as the finisher, Aggro Secrets which focused on snowballing early Crossroads Gossipers into a Smythe finisher, or Secret Dude with Lothraxion and buffs. And within each of those variants there are usually a couple of cards that aren't essential that you can experiment with running in different numbers while keeping to the core.