What Are You Playing 10: Ten Builds, Zero Progress

[LibraryOgre]

Managed to get to play some Dragon Age 2 and I just have to ask, does ANYONE else find the Tallis and Mark of the Assasin DLC to be absolutely terrible? I mean like Insultingly and insufferably so, or is it just me?

The entire time, Talis comes off as EXCEPTIONALLY brainwashed. "No, you don't get it, having no choice about your career is incredibly freeing."

[SerTabris]

The entire time, Talis comes off as EXCEPTIONALLY brainwashed. "No, you don't get it, having no choice about your career is incredibly freeing."

On one level I do think that makes sense; given a character who actually decided to convert to the Qun, that's pretty much the logical conclusion for what they'd be like. We should really be able to say more about it though, especially as a mage.

[WritersBlock]

THAT was a huge part of my problem with it. She comes across as way to much of a mary sue for the faction she represents, "she is right and you cannot question her or the qunari or their actions." Its terrible.

I have no problem with Felicia Day, she was not the issue. Meryl Streep in her prime could not have saved the horrible writing of this dlc.

[warty goblin]

The character switching in Wayfinders put me in mind of Shadows Awakening (also currently free on GoG) so I fired that back up. Upside, GoG still has my cloud saves from six years ago. Downside, I have literally no idea what I was doing six years ago. So it's start over time.

Shadows Awakening is a somewhat odd little isometric action RPG. You play as Devourer, a soul consuming demon conjured up by a mysterious wizard for purposes unknown. You then immediately possess one of three primary heroes (warrior dude, ranger dude, smoking hot fire sorceress I always pick,) the demon only exists in a shadow version of the world, the human in the normal material realm. You can switch between the two at will.

The cool bit though is that you pick up other souls/characters throughout the game. Each one gets their own skill tree and inventory and distinct playable and moveset. You always have Devourer and the primary hero, who determines a lot of the story, with another two slots for whomever you want to bring along, with your other characters hanging out in limbo when not in use.

Now individually the heroes are pretty simple, but there's a lot, some of them are really odd, and you are switching constantly. Keeps things fresh. There's also a lot of exploration and light puzzles, many of which revolve around form switching. The shadow world that Devourer inhabits often has different paths available, or hidden treasure, and as the real world pauses there, its necessary for some timing puzzles.

I really like this. The setting is an enjoyably slightly weird version of standard fantasy, the writing is good enough and keeps things moving forward at a good clip, and it's generally one of those games that makes a strength out of its simplicity. A game that definitely deserves a bit more love.

[Zombimode]

This sounds all good

I did "fall" for this marketing stunt: in addition to getting Shadows Awakening for free I also bought the two DLCs and the game's predecessor Shadows Heretic Kingdoms...

[warty goblin]

This sounds all good

I did "fall" for this marketing stunt: in addition to getting Shadows Awakening for free I also bought the two DLCs and the game's predecessor Shadows Heretic Kingdoms...

The DLCs are definitely worth it, they're dirt cheap, add some cool quests and an extra character each. You can never have too many weird fantasy dudes around. Heretic Kingdoms is fine, but really, really old. I've never gotten very far in it.

[Eldan]

Okay, I think I'm done with Inscryption. Act 2 is just unpleasant* and didn't get better in an hour or so playing it, so I think I'll keep considering it a very atmospheric five hour indie game that's a bit overpriced.

*

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Not just the presentation. I switched the grating music off, which helped, but, well, the pixel art isn't really *good* pixel art and it makes it considerably less nice to play the actual card game, as I find it a lot harder to tell at a glance what cards do without the clean design of act 1. And the mechanics are less interesting, too: combining cards in different ways, while it was often grossly overpowered, was fun and that's gone now. Free deckbuilding and the rather meh wizard and robot suits don't make up for it.

[Anonymouswizard]

The DLCs are definitely worth it, they're dirt cheap, add some cool quests and an extra character each. You can never have too many weird fantasy dudes around. Heretic Kingdoms is fine, but really, really old. I've never gotten very far in it.

I've only played Kult: Heretic Kingdoms and died about two minutes into the tutorial. I should try it again sometime.

[Jophiel]

Okay, I think I'm done with Inscryption. Act 2 is just unpleasant* and didn't get better in an hour or so playing it

My experience was a lot like yours. Started strong, didn't enjoy the flip.

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I think part of it might be that I have no nostalgia or fondness for early Gameboy style graphics or game play. Despite playing on computers (and a few consoles) since my Atari 2600 days, I never got much into portables. So the audio/visuals just felt like ugly, low-rent audio/visuals. But I didn't care for the new game play either so it really had nothing to keep me. First part of the game was fun though!

[warty goblin]

I've only played Kult: Heretic Kingdoms and died about two minutes into the tutorial. I should try it again sometime.

I've made it through the tutorial, but not much farther. By far the coolest thing about the game is the dual layer physical/shadow world thing, which Shadows Awakening does as well, but in a much friendlier, less archaic package. Unless you really care about the lore of obscure RPGs from 20 years ago, just go for Awakening.

(You may also run across something called Shadows: Heretic Kingdoms, which is just a worse, earlier version of Awakening. IIRC the devs kinda ran out of money and released the first version, used the money to finish and improve, and then released Awakening, giving a free copy to everyone who had bought the original version in the process.)

[Zombimode]

(You may also run across something called Shadows: Heretic Kingdoms, which is just a worse, earlier version of Awakening. IIRC the devs kinda ran out of money and released the first version, used the money to finish and improve, and then released Awakening, giving a free copy to everyone who had bought the original version in the process.)

Oh, that's the one I bought...

[warty goblin]

Oh, that's the one I bought...

Bummer. GoG has a pretty easy return process though, you just have to go to your profile, click Orders and Settings, and choose what you want to refund. IIRC if you return for store credit it processes really fast too.

If you want the genuine first game in the series, that's Kult: Heretic Kingdoms.

[Anonymouswizard]

I've made it through the tutorial, but not much farther. By far the coolest thing about the game is the dual layer physical/shadow world thing, which Shadows Awakening does as well, but in a much friendlier, less archaic package. Unless you really care about the lore of obscure RPGs from 20 years ago, just go for Awakening.

I mean, I'm going to give Kult another go, considering I already have it and the premise is interesting.


Decided to try to finish Dragon Quest XI, and did the game designers really think taking my ability to run and ride a horse away for an entire arc was a GOOD thing? This is making the excellent opening to Act 2 seem like a really, really long time ago.

[WritersBlock]

Found a really cool FPS/beat em up/Immersive sim hybrid called Fallen Aces for 13 bucks on steam. Its basically and old school comics looking game and is a nice mixture of Condemned: Criminal Origins, thief, and a little bit of Deus Ex among a few others. Also liked the look, atmosphere and setting of the game. (Elements of **** Tracy, Watchmen, and a few others.) I also liked the idea that you can pick up and use items laying around all over the stages to use as a weapon, throw a trash can, use the lid on them and/or use it as a shield as well. Rip wood planks out of the floor to use as a makeshift club. Or just stealth your way past stuff. Or use Q and mighty foot goons off of buildings or off a pier into shark infested water. Or just to knock them down or stun them(I really should use that more, it helps a lot in combat)

The one thing I did not care for is if you do not sneak up behind a gun wielder and use your sneak judo chop to knock him out, the gun breaks and is unusable if you beat him any other way.

I think one of the finishers you can use on a stunned enemy is a Chuck Norris roundhouse kick and I threw a bar of soap at an enemy and they exploded into gibs

So yeah, great purchase.

[Eldan]

My experience was a lot like yours. Started strong, didn't enjoy the flip.

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I think part of it might be that I have no nostalgia or fondness for early Gameboy style graphics or game play. Despite playing on computers (and a few consoles) since my Atari 2600 days, I never got much into portables. So the audio/visuals just felt like ugly, low-rent audio/visuals. But I didn't care for the new game play either so it really had nothing to keep me. First part of the game was fun though!

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I had an original grey brick game boy and even played and liked the Pokemon card game on it which was clearly a major inspiration. Zero nostalgia, though.

[Rodin]

My experience was a lot like yours. Started strong, didn't enjoy the flip.

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I think part of it might be that I have no nostalgia or fondness for early Gameboy style graphics or game play. Despite playing on computers (and a few consoles) since my Atari 2600 days, I never got much into portables. So the audio/visuals just felt like ugly, low-rent audio/visuals. But I didn't care for the new game play either so it really had nothing to keep me. First part of the game was fun though!

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I had the nostalgia, but they hadn't gotten me interested in their card game with the first part. The card game was a way of interacting with the escape room. So when they removed the escape room and expanded the card game massively, I switched off immediately. If they had kept the escape room (maybe putting you in a new one) and expanded the rules I might have been more engaged.
The double whammy of changing the vibe and changing the gameplay was like throwing a brick wall up in my face.

[Eldan]

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I thought the card game in the first part was just fine. Very Slay the Spire/Tights in Fight Spaces overland map layout and a few interesting enough rules twists that I haven't seen in other roguelike deckbuilders of the same kind. Sacrifices and bones are nice and thematic resources, combining cards is an extremely fun and versatile mechanic and I haven't seen that way before and the positioning, while similar to a few other games I could think of works well enough. Like, make the overland map longer, include more cards, perhaps a few starting options like classes or different tribal decks, a few different boss variants, and I'll gladly play 20 bucks to just play that game, especially since it's also mixed with a great atmosphere and a very characterful game master. Which is the game I thought I was going to get.

But the card game stopped being interesting when they made it a lot harder to read, took out all the atmosphere and made the mechanics a lot less coherent.

The escape room part was fine, but not very interesting to me. Too easy to be an interesting puzzle, almost all of it solveable by "click thing on thing".

[Zombimode]

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If they had kept the escape room (maybe putting you in a new one) and expanded the rules I might have been more engaged.

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Uhm... you are in a new escape room.

[Rodin]

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Uhm... you are in a new escape room.

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Really? I couldn’t tell behind the infodump of instructions for the card game. If there were escape room puzzles like the first room I noped out of the game before they appeared.

[Eldan]

You aren't really. You're solving some very simple puzzles before you can fight the various enemies, but they aren't very escape-room like and after that, it's just "fight four bosses to win".

[Zombimode]

I mean there is a difference between "it's an escape room I don't like" and "it's not an escape room".

But I didn't meant to antagonize. It's unfortunate that you didn't enjoy the game because at least for me it was a very unique and interesting (and also enjoyable) experience.
Especially for a game like Inscryption it's not surprising that opinions differ widely.

[Rodin]

I mean there is a difference between "it's an escape room I don't like" and "it's not an escape room".

But I didn't meant to antagonize. It's unfortunate that you didn't enjoy the game because at least for me it was a very unique and interesting (and also enjoyable) experience.
Especially for a game like Inscryption it's not surprising that opinions differ widely.

Don't worry, you didn't antagonize. Perhaps I wasn't quite clear on what I meant in the first place.

A lot of the blame I think comes from the marketing. It's sold as a rogue-like deckbuilder that blends a Slay the Spire experience with a horror escape room. While that's not un-true, the deckbuilding roguelike in the first portion of the game is pretty barebones. It's there to supplement the escape room experience, not the other way around. And I was fine with that - it was very fun meeting conditions in the card game and getting tools I could use to advance the escape room, then use tools from the escape room to cheat the card game, all bound together with a wonderful horror atmosphere. It's a really cool setup, but it isn't the Slay the Spire experience that the marketing implies. The card game is an appendage of what is fundamentally a horror game.

Then you hit Act 2, and the focus totally changes. The horror element is totally removed, because apparently that was just a game? I think? You're told that the card game that was previously just a tool to advance in the horror game is now the main focus, and by the way here's a million new cards and rules, and it's no longer a deckbuilder because you're creating a deck to go into these battles. At the same time, the vibe totally changes into something that was not featured in the marketing at all. I have the nostalgia for Gameboy (in fact I was playing Final Fantasy Legend III just last week) but I never played or had any interest in Pokemon, the very specific nostalgia they're driving at. I felt completely robbed of the game I had been playing and while it might have gotten better I didn't have the will to learn an entirely new system to go on top of a card game I had found mildly interesting. I was there for the horror escape room elements, and the atmosphere they had build up was totally shattered by the 8-bit graphics.

That whiplash was a bold choice, and some folks seem to have enjoyed it. I'm glad for those who did. But I very much understand why Inscryption is so divisive, because how the game changes between Acts I and II is far more than just the art style.

[Eldan]

I mean there is a difference between "it's an escape room I don't like" and "it's not an escape room".

But I didn't meant to antagonize. It's unfortunate that you didn't enjoy the game because at least for me it was a very unique and interesting (and also enjoyable) experience.
Especially for a game like Inscryption it's not surprising that opinions differ widely.

I just feel like that not anything that has puzzles in it is an escape room, really? It's an open world with some puzzles that you get through to advance, it's not a room.

[Ionathus]

I mostly remember Felicia Day as a voice actor for playing Veronica in Fallout New Vegas, and I think she was quite good in that.

Oh my god, I've been taking Veronica in my current playthrough and I never even knew this! Honestly I didn't even realize I recognized her voice but now that you say it, yeah, that's absolutely her.

The only thing I'd really noticed was how tongue-in-cheek and smarmy so many of the lines were. Though it works for the character. Honestly the wasteland could use a bit of levity.

[Zombimode]

Don't worry, you didn't antagonize. Perhaps I wasn't quite clear on what I meant in the first place.

A lot of the blame I think comes from the marketing. It's sold as a rogue-like deckbuilder that blends a Slay the Spire experience with a horror escape room. While that's not un-true, the deckbuilding roguelike in the first portion of the game is pretty barebones. It's there to supplement the escape room experience, not the other way around. And I was fine with that - it was very fun meeting conditions in the card game and getting tools I could use to advance the escape room, then use tools from the escape room to cheat the card game, all bound together with a wonderful horror atmosphere. It's a really cool setup, but it isn't the Slay the Spire experience that the marketing implies. The card game is an appendage of what is fundamentally a horror game.

Then you hit Act 2, and the focus totally changes. The horror element is totally removed, because apparently that was just a game? I think? You're told that the card game that was previously just a tool to advance in the horror game is now the main focus, and by the way here's a million new cards and rules, and it's no longer a deckbuilder because you're creating a deck to go into these battles. At the same time, the vibe totally changes into something that was not featured in the marketing at all. I have the nostalgia for Gameboy (in fact I was playing Final Fantasy Legend III just last week) but I never played or had any interest in Pokemon, the very specific nostalgia they're driving at. I felt completely robbed of the game I had been playing and while it might have gotten better I didn't have the will to learn an entirely new system to go on top of a card game I had found mildly interesting. I was there for the horror escape room elements, and the atmosphere they had build up was totally shattered by the 8-bit graphics.

That whiplash was a bold choice, and some folks seem to have enjoyed it. I'm glad for those who did. But I very much understand why Inscryption is so divisive, because how the game changes between Acts I and II is far more than just the art style.

Yeah, the tricky part with games like Inscryption is that the marketing can't be truthful (or at least not explicit) about the point and focus of the game

Inscryption relies on the players ability to "get" what kind of experience the game wants to offer and then of course the buy-in to this experience. And the "figuring out what this game is" is also part of the fun

While "a rogue-like deckbuilder that blends a Slay the Spire experience with a horror escape room." is not completely untrue, it ultimately misses the mark.

"It's an Artsy-fartsy game" or "a puzzle for grown-ups" would be a lot more accurate but also of questionable marketing value

[Cygnia]

I still need to finish The Hex and Pony Island. Problem is, my shoot 'em up skills are terrible...

[Cespenar]

I think Inscryption's gimmicks would hit harder in the 2010s instead.

[MinimanMidget]

I feel sorry for anyone who was turned away by Act 2 and didn't get to experience Inscryption's ending, because damn. Especially since the ending is actually really geared towards people who loved Act 1 more than the rest of the game.

[Cygnia]

Bit the bullet and started Inscryption after all. Already this game is gonna frustrate me because I want to finish it, but I'm worried my card skills are too poor...

[warty goblin]

Beat the first substantial boss in Shadows. This was close to that rara avis, an enjoyable boss fight. Took two tries, some very slight grinding to get to level 5 (lots of gear has a level 5 requirement) and some very rapid character switching at a few points.

Here I must describe the healing system in Shadows, because it's fairly interesting and fairly unique. You get an item slot that has a set number of charges, which can be spent on health or mana. Aside from things like life steal, that's the only healing in the game. The only way to refill your charges is damaging enemies, or paying a specific merchant who only appears at set points in the shadow realm. This is really expensive, and money is actually pretty tight, particularly early game. Basically it's the good parts of a Souls healing system (limited, meaningful healing) but without the dumb parts (bonfires, respawning enemies, XP as money) and successfully integrated into a normal RPG economy.

All of which is a long way of saying don't go into boss fights with one healing charge.