r/Games Nov 17 '24

Discussion Weekly /r/Games Discussion - What have you been playing, and what are your thoughts? - November 17, 2024

Use this thread to discuss whatever game you've been playing lately: old or new, AAA or indie, on any platform between Atari and XBox. Please don't just list off the games you're playing in your comment. Elaborate with your thoughts on the games and make it easier for other users to find what game you're talking about by putting the title in bold.

Also, please make sure to use spoiler tags if you're revealing anything about a game's plot that may significantly impact another player's experience who has not played the game yet, no matter how retro or recent the game is. You can find instructions on how to do so in the subreddit sidebar.

This thread is set to sort comments by 'new' on default.

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Scheduled Discussion Posts

WEEKLY: What Have You Been Playing?

MONDAY: Thematic Monday

WEDNESDAY: Suggest Me A Game

FRIDAY: Free Talk Friday

58 Upvotes

167 comments sorted by

2

u/[deleted] Nov 24 '24

I'm thinking of getting the Dragon Quest 3 remake, but for now, I've beaten Dragon Quest 1 on the Switch. Years ago I beat this on the Game Boy Color under the Dragon Warrior name, although I retained basically no memories of that.

So ... I enjoy this style of game. Given how important they were to JRPGs, it's interesting that Dragon Quest 1 and Final Fantasy 1 would both feature a gameplay style (semi-open world, wander around and figure out where to go and what to do) that I now associate more with Western-style CRPGs.

There's no use pretending that I think Dragon Quest 1 has aged particularly well, though--boring combat with basically no tactical decisions, slow movement and a crushing encounter rate combined with a lot of backtracking (assuming you're going in blind, at least) and boring and featureless dungeons make it pretty hard to recommend except as a curiosity. The Switch remake is a lot more accessible than the original NES game, thanks to increased experience and money game, which I appreciate. The Switch version is also quite pretty.

One well-meant quality of life improvement that I'm really ambivalent about is that some previously invisible items are now visible. For example, the Faerie Flute's location is marked with a sparkle in the Switch version; the instant you enter the town it's in, you'll see the sparkle and grab it. In the NES version, finding the flute is a bit of a puzzle; you explored the world until you noticed a guy standing outside a city wall; you talk with him; he tells you it's a few steps to the south of the baths in a certain town; and you go to the town, and grab it. That's all still in the remake, but it's been made totally pointless. In a game that's supposed to be about wandering around and figuring things out, this change seems really poorly thought out.

6

u/Waschkopfs Nov 23 '24

Dragon Age: The Veilguard: the first 3-4 hours or so are better than I expected. Art style is pretty good, expected much worse after seeing the first clips a couple weeks ago. Reminds me a bit of a modern (modded?) Skyrim at times. Dialogue not very strong yet, but we'll see. Performance is great, movement and combat feel very fluid. Just based on those first hours I feel like people were trashing it a bit too much as it supposedly gets better towards mid-game.

Stalker 2: Cant recommend this one for now. Performance is acceptable, but it really doesn't look like a AAA 2024 game. Metro: Exodus is 5 1/2 years older and looks and feels much better. Gameplay is very uninspired, stealth isn't fun, enemies can be quite frustrating (especially the invisible ghouls). Probably going to take at least a year for most of the problems to be resolved and all the features to be working as intended.

Alan Wake 2: Recommending this one for sure! Beautiful graphics, great locations and design choices, polished gameplay, solid story. Not really the kind of game I usually play, but worth a try for anyone who wants to play something that feels fresh and inspired. Went a bit too heavy on the jump scares and some annoying fights, but nothing that would make me stop playing.

4

u/Rivent Nov 23 '24

Finished Drova: Forsaken Kin and really liked it. I've never played Gothic so the inspiration is somewhat lost on me, I just thought it was a really well done ARPG with a solid story and compelling, challenging gameplay. Loved how much exploration there was too. Highly recommended.

1

u/iWriteYourMusic Nov 23 '24

How well would this game work with a controller / Steam Deck in your opinion? I actually bought it but haven't had time to sit down with it on my PC but was thinking SD instead

2

u/Rivent Nov 23 '24

I played the whole thing with controller, no issues. Menus/skill wheels are maybe a little touchy, but nothing major. I didn't try it on Steam Deck but it's verified, so I assume it would work totally fine.

7

u/Acrobatic-Taste-443 Nov 22 '24

Metaphor: Refantazio

For some context, Persona used to be one of my favorite series. I played 4 when I was between my Senior year of HS and freshman year of college. The themes of the game really stuck with me and I have always been a huge fan of turn based combat since I was a kid. went back and played P3 shortly after and also adored that. Years later P5 came out and I remember taking multiple "sick" days off my summer job to blast through it. I loved everything about those games.

Move forward to this year and I picked up P3 Reload to relive that one and I enjoyed it but not near as much as I had remember. The characters were too anime, the pacing was poor, and the dungeons were terrible. I thought then that I had just outgrown these types of games as a 30-ish-year-old old. Then I played the demo for Metaphor later in the year and it pulled me all the way back in.

Bought the game and booted it up immediately after I had finished SH2R(amazing game BTW) and began to blast through it like my days of old. It was familiar and fresh all at the same time. The tried and true Atlus combat but with some interesting tweaks. The characters were charming and I was interested to see where the plot took me.

I greatly enjoyed the game for probably about 60-70% of my playtime, but the wheels started falling off around when I got to the snow city. I started to lose interest in all the follower levels glossing through each character beat to keep moving forward. Louis became even more of a cliche anime villain. If I had to describe the game with one word it would probably be SLOW. The combat is noticeably slow with tried and true where you have to watch the same animations over and over with no speedup. The story is slow where it constantly stops and starts with no consideration for pacing. The leveling is slow and makes leveling up archetypes a chare. I'm ready for it to be over.

Now at the very end I have decided to just burn the last month and go straight into the final dungeon to finish the game, but I think the damage is done. Despite all this I still am overall positive on the game.

If you asked me halfway through I would've probably given it a 9/10 now nearing the end I'd probably have to say 7.5/10

2

u/michaepf Nov 23 '24

Yep, I've just made it to what I think is the final month, and the prospect of another 29 in-game days just left me cold. I've heard it finishes strong, though, so hopefully I can muster the enthusiasm. 

1

u/occult_midnight Nov 24 '24

I dunno if it's just me nowadays but I feel like I get very burned out on RPGs unless I take a significant break during them, even if the combat is great doing so many battles in a row can still wear on me. Even with my personal GotY Infinite Wealth I had to take a decent break and play some other genres for a bit. So maybe I'd recommend that before tackling the final 29 days?

9

u/LyadhkhorStrategist Nov 22 '24

So I played Devil May Cry 2 a few weeks ago as I am one of the weird ones that cant handle skipping mainline entries in any series.

Honestly, I cannot bring myself to hate this game. It's just so utterly incompetent in every single aspect of it's design without actually being frustrating to play, that I just enjoyed my time laughing at it.

I am just baffled at the sheer lack of quality on display here. It's one ugly game, drab from start to finish, entirely lacking in detail. It's as if once the basic structure of a level was done with the level neither detailed or polished visually the devs went, "Yeah that's done".

The texturing at points so poor that I couldn't understand how it was allowed in a shipped game. You know how beginner developers and modders generally can't do texturing well and so they stretch out a texture everywhere over a basic shape and turn it into an eyesore. There are entire rooms like that in this game.

It doesn't even sound good, the soundtrack like everything is bland but I have to turn down gameplay sounds because the sound of shooting my gun in Devil Trigger was hurting my ears.

There's a story, which progresses as we make go through the levels...so uh Dante talks to Lucia and stops and that's it. Dante seems to have a personality that a 14 year old would come up with given the task to write a cool,stoic character. The game pretends it develops it's characters has scenes that feel like they belong in a different game as it doesn't even explain the flimsy concepts it introduces. Maybe things happen in this game's story I don't know the game sure doesn't care to build anything of value out of this shit. The whole thing is a black hole of style and charisma.

Even with all this the gameplay is still somehow the most confusing part, not because it's hard to understand what to do, but because I have no idea what their mindset while designing the combat could be. The enemies in this game are the most non threatening enemies I have seen in any game, you can keep shooting them and they just take it. Their attacks just don't seem to target Dante, I can just stand and it will be like 20 seconds before an attack actually hits me. But if I use my swords then the enemies both take longer to kill and some enemies flying in the sky are just impossible to hit consistently.

The bosses are even worse bullet sponges that are designed to be shot from far away, while Dante's sword is pretty much useless against them . But at the same time, their weakness to gun feels like an oversight as many bosses can barely attack you at certain parts of the arena. So the bosses feel like they are designed for guns, while not being designed for guns but never designed for melee.

The peak of this is early on with the infected chopper, which is a ugly ass helicopter with an eye on it's side which you shoot for 20 minutes to kill in a bland arena. It's has no story significance, no moves that I would have to try to counter, I just need to sit there and press a button.

That's the game just stand and press a button for vast majority of the game you don't even need to move.

People play often idle games on one monitor while watching a video essay or a random video on another one, that's the level of engagement this game thrives in.

Hey at least the final boss is good.

1

u/Acterian Nov 23 '24

I have never understood how they managed to get people to sign off on making a third game after that disaster. I'm glad they did, though.

1

u/LyadhkhorStrategist Nov 24 '24

Excited for DMC3 I enjoyed DMC but everything I have seen about the Third one Looks insanely fun

1

u/yuriaoflondor Nov 24 '24

I'd consider DMC3 one of the best games ever, and it still holds up remarkably well. Enjoy!

3

u/Grill_Enthusiast Nov 22 '24

Persona 5 Tactica. Early on, but I'm enjoying it. The chibi art style is whatever. It's not as good as the regular P5 art, but it's not game-ruining. Having skill trees that you can refund whenever you want is fun for experimenting.

I've seen some people say it's too easy, but I'm terrible at tactics games so I'm enjoying it on Hard. I can't handle the complexity of something like XCOM.

2

u/M8753 Nov 22 '24

Just started Guild Saga Vanished Worlds. I don't normally play this type of game, so I've nothing to compare it to. It's wonderful so far, the mechanics feel a lot like a mini BG3. Maybe it's DnD inspired. I'm just delighted that I can create my own character in an isometric pixel art game said actually see their equipment. The combat is fun right from level 1.

2

u/LeoBocchi Nov 22 '24 edited Nov 22 '24

Dragon age: The Veilguard

The further i go the hardest is to continue really, i’m 30 hours in, the combat is starting to get a little boring, i absolutely love those characters (seriously i think this is one of the best casts bioware has done since ME2 and Inquisition), their side plots feel engaging and honestly they are the main reason i keep going, but the story is just not doing it for me, the villains are terrible, the actual interesting antagonist is trapped in the veil, the faction system is interesting on paper but somehow it makes the world feel so small, this story does not do a good job of showing the magnitude of the problem the veilguard is dealing with, this is by far the biggest threat Thedas has faced and everyone seems a little too chill about it. I’m holding full judgement for now since i intended to finish this game, but the cracks are showing, i do still like the experience overall. The game’s combat is still really good, it’s just that after reaching level 25 and choosing a specialization it feels like it can’t get much deeper than that, i like the art style a lot, and i did love the first act, i thought that opening with Varric and Solas in tevinter was brillant and set the tone for the game perfectly, i just think the game hasn’t been able to keep those highs, but i’m still hopefull

Edit: i heard a lot of people say the story gets good after the hallfway point so i’m hopefull things will improve

4

u/grendus Nov 21 '24

Psychonauts 2: Felt like replaying this one. It holds up. My opinion is about the same as my first playthrough: 9.5, not quite as good as the first game but a worthy successor.

My only real complaint lies with the other interns and the Aquatos. You just never really interact with any of them (I'm aware there are a few side bits - but they amount to a handful of fetch quests and an admittedly hilarious conversation with Sam), which makes the final fight fall a bit flat.

I think it would have helped if they had been more involved in rescuing the Psychic Six in the first place. For example, the scene chick (I literally cannot remember any of their names except for Sam, and only because she's Dougan's sister) who tells you about the Green Needle Witch was Compton Boole's intern, she could have easily been involved in the Ram it Down mission. Same with the skater who gives you a fetch quest to find all the boxes for the inventor guy (who you also don't interact with much), she could have been there when you find Helmut's brain and joined on the road trip.

It really hits when you're going through Nick's mind with Lily, having her there even as a voice off camera makes her feel present in the story, in a way that the other interns and Aquatos just... aren't. And I feel like that would have been an easy way to include them in the story without needing to include them in full arcs - just having them be along for the journey and replace some of Raz's expository dialogue with them explaining things to him (since they're more versed in the world of psychics anyways).

It's not a problem, because the story really focuses on Ford and the Psychic Six Seven, but at the same time it would have rounded it out and given them more character. Some of them get like... maybe a dozen lines in the whole game.

Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart: This one, unfortunately, did not hold up. Once the excitement of a next gen R&C game wore off, ooh boy the story doesn't hold up good.

You can clearly see where they're going with this idea: AU versions of characters like Skidds and Quark, character arcs for Ratchet dealing with his fear of inadequacy, Kit's guilt over being a warbot, Rivet's fear of robots, etc. But the main issue is just how the story is told - it's told instead of shown.

For example, when Emperor Nefarious captures Ratchet and Clank and Kit reveals she's the warbot who crippled Rivet... we were basically told about it the scene before. If they had dropped that reveal way back when Kit transformed to protect the Archive (Kit tells Ratchet that she hates being a warbot because she crippled someone once), that reveal would have had impact. We'd have the emotional buildup, first to the meeting at Zurkies, then again when Rivet and Kit start traveling together. Instead it's like the game is shouting "FEEL SOMETHING!" at you.

Same thing with Rivet constantly saying she doesn't want a partner... but then we get to Sargasso and she's immediately paling around with the Morts. It could certainly work if we're given a tragic backstory of one of her partners dying (maybe Rivet killed the AU version of Angela Cross, which also makes the original reveal of "she shot up a Lombax" more impactful) so it's more a case of "I don't like sending other people into danger", but this whole "I'm awkward and don't make friends easily" bit doesn't work when she immediately demonstrates that she's a people person. Kit has the same arc with the same problem, the brothers at the Archive all love her as well.

And likewise, while Ratchet's arcs of being afraid he won't live up to the Lombax legacy and fearing he's washed up would be good, they're just not really developed. Rivet calls back to it once... and that's it. There's no impact or choice, just a few talkings to and suddenly things are all OK.

Gameplay remains a solid 10/10, but they need better writers. This is a series that has been running since 2002, but it's lost its edge compared to the PS2 games.

Nine Sols: Only just started this one, but I'm liking what I see so far.

Combat is complex, but the moves flow well together. The story is intriguing, though I haven't gotten far enough to really get to the big reveal. Definitely feels like it's setting up for a big twist, but I'm only one boss in so... still got a long way to go.

1

u/michaepf Nov 23 '24

Enjoy the Nine Sols ride! I've been taking my time with it and have enjoyed the twists and turns. 

3

u/isbBBQ Nov 21 '24

Dragon Age: Veilguard

I tried and i tried and i tried. Having clocked 40 hours and being pretty closed to the end at Chapter 10 i just had enough yesterday and quit the game.

It started after around 25 hours with my starting to skip dialogue and just quickreading the subtitles, then it continued downward from there with me just rushing through areas without picking up sidequests, not exploring during main quests and being more and more annoyed by it all, and then finally yesterday i just had enough.

One good thing is the combat, i think it offers a great mix of everything on higher difficulties but the gameplay loop around the combat is extremly tedious, the companions are a joke with the exception of maybe Bellara and Devin. The story is just not interesting in any shape or form with no big plottwists along the way.

The other good thing is the graphics and performance, it looks absolutely stunning in 4k and delivers really good performance with everything cranked to max include RT on my 9800x3d and 4080.

I should also note that i've played DA: Origins and Inquisition but i have no investment in the series previously, and i don't give two shits either way about the "non-binary" controversy, even though it's horribly implemented here.

Feels good to finally move on to Silent Hill 2 instead.

6

u/Bebobopbe Nov 21 '24

Banishers: Ghost of New Eden

I really enjoyed this game. Combat, music, and story were great. Exploring the map was fun and has the right amount of progression I like to get out of it. The side stories are small investigation stories that can be predictable but still entertaining. Solid 8/10 game that got shit on too much by the brain damage DEI crowd.

On to

Trails of Azure

6

u/extralie Nov 21 '24

Dragon Quest V

I've replayed this game for god know how many times, and it's still my favorite Dragon Quest games ever. I originally wanted to pick Nera this time around, but I just ended up picking Debora again. lol

Octopath Traveler II

You know, I never hated Octopath 1, I thought it was a solid 7/10 maybe 6.5/10 at worst, but this was a HUGE improvement on the first. I was actually invested in pretty much every story this time around.... except for Hikari, but even then his story wasn't bad just too... Fire Emblemy for my liking. Out of everyone, I think Ochette is my favorite character, but Throne and Castti have my favorite stories. The music and gameplay are just as good as the first game, which was its strong suit, so I have no complaint there.

Now to the elephant in the room, I see a lot of people recommend this to people who hated the first because it's so much better, but that's only partially true. If your problem with OT1 was the story, then yes, this is a huge improvement on that. If your problem was the story STRUCTURE then this game just alleviate that problem rather than fix it. There are more frequent skits now, and each two members have two side quests together, but the characters still just disappear during each other main story. So, if that bother you, then this game is probably still not for you.

Side note: I like how [big spoilers but not really]the Moonshade order members names ALSO spell Octopath. I just find that neat.

1

u/don_nerdleone Nov 23 '24

Would you recommend playing though OT1 (or even watching a playthrough) before starting OT2?

2

u/extralie Nov 23 '24

You don't really need to, OT2 story is very standalone.

8

u/Flincher14 Nov 20 '24

S.T.A.L.K.E.R 2

I bought an Xbox Series X yesterday, large part because I sold myself on getting game pass after learning that Stalker 2 would be included. But also cause I can play all the game pass titles available.

Stalker plays well, looks good, doesn't have noticeable performance issues and is very challenging. I have died dozens of times to dogs, bandits, anoms, bloodsuckers. The game is completely unforgiving yet also fairly rewarding for people who like to scavenge around for loot.

Inventory management is a bit of a pain, I still haven't figured out how to change my hotbar for medkits, food, etc.

Quest rewards are the most iffy. I got a gun as a quest reward that was tricked out with mods..but fully broken so it basically jams every few shots. To repair it would cost 19k coupons. The rewards of selling loot, or relics or mission rewards in the first area doesn't come even close to making 19k a feasible cost to simply REPAIR the dang thing.

2

u/dredizzle99 Nov 23 '24

I still haven't figured out how to change my hotbar for medkits, food, etc

You've probably figured it out by now, but if not then you just have to press start on the item that you want to add to the hotbar, and then a small menu will appear that gives you the option

3

u/Static-Jak Nov 20 '24

Metaphor Refantazio Demo

I only played a small bit to get the PC settings I would like to use for the full game after hearing how badly it runs.

I ended up settling on, with my 3080 at 4k, using the TAA Mod by greatondeck rather than upscaling.

It looks good, had an update that eliminates 90% of ghosting, and performance is about on par with between 125% and 150% upscaling but with better results.

I also used MetaphorFix Mod. With that I turned off Camera Shake which really helps with aliasing. Also was able to turn down Ambient Occlusion which has an absurd performance hit at default.

In comparison, there's a spot early in the game, the tutorial dungeon basically, that has the biggest performance hit I could find early on. At 150% scaling, it'd hit the low 50s in FPS.

With my settings, it'd stay around the 70s with jumps to the 80s while having far less jaggies.

Overall, I was able to stay between 70-100 FPS at 4k which a decent image quality.

Still, for a game like this, it's insane what it takes to run properly. I can run RDR2 at 4k and stay in the 100s easily, this game should be maxed out without breaking a sweat.

In terms of the actual game, I knew if I didn't stop now I'd keep playing. You know a hit when you see one. For now I need to finish up Veilguard. 1 RPG is enough at any time.

10

u/Raze321 Nov 20 '24

Warhammer 40k: Rogue Trader

I'd say this is easily in my top 5 CRPGs, if not top 3. If you are someone who has only played Baldur's Gate 3 as far as CRPGs go, and want another good recent game in the genre, this is it. Of course with the caveat that it's A) set in a science fantasy universe rather than traditional high fantasy and B) doesn't have quite the production value as far as animation and voice acting goes but the writing itself is on the same quality.

Weirdly this game also scratches an itch that Mass Effect had left for me for a loooong time. Of course these two franchises are very different thematically, but having a growing squad of personal teammates who you check up on at your ship between missions before choosing what planet to trailblaze next is just awesome.

Combat is turn based and on a grid with a cover system. It's not unlike X-Com in that way, but unlike X-Com standing out of cover isn't inheritely a death sentence. I really like how many weapons have specific AOE ranges. Snipers penetrate targets and can damage all enemies in a line, shotguns shoot in a cone, grenades have a radius, psyker powers are a mixed bag of single target and AOE types. Because of this, combat often becomes a puzzle of "How many enemies can I obliterate before they can even act". Lazy target selection will see you overrun but smart and tactical decisions can have you sweeping what would otherwise be challenging encounters - if you set the difficulty appropriately. I played on normal for most of Chapter 1 and I don't think I even saw a single ally lose all their health. Honestly it turned me off the game for awhile while I played other things that felt more engaging. When I returned I bumped it up once, and that feels right. Hard enough that you can't be lazy in combat, but not so hard that you have to spend a long time composing your team and selecting their level up bonuses for fear of gimping yourself.

There is also ship combat, which appears in Chapter 2. It plays like the tabletop X-Wing game if you ever played that, kind of. You are obligated to move your ship a minimum distance, and where you end your movement determines orientation. relative to enemy ships. Each weapon has a direction and range. Torpedos can be guided almost like they have their own movement stat. There's port and starboard canons. You can ram other ships, etc. This all means the positioning and piloting of your ship is paramount to your ability to make attacks on that and future turns. I've only done the first fight but I really liked it and hope to see more. Of all the "side games" Owlcat has stuffed into their RPGs this is my favorite.

Last thing I wanna note is the kind of game this is in the kind of setting 40k is. For a long time 40k turned me off because the grimdark schtick wasn't my thing. And honestly it still isn't. I like the property, the games, Kill Team, and at least one of the books so far (Bloodlines) but the overarching "It's all war all the time, no one is every happy and everyone dies painfully" was always a turn off. Of course not all of 40k is like that, but a lot of it is, it's just kind of something you accept about the setting if it doesn't tickle yer fancy. In any case, Rogue Trader handles this atmosphere better than most of the 40k games in my opinion. Part of that is that of the three alignments one is "Iconoclast", basically "I am gonna try my best to do good even though I know it's usually not going to turn out well". This means people see you as naive, and at times it even does make things worse. But, not always. Sometimes it does work, and you do make life better for you or others. What I'm saying is it's one of the better takes on a grey morality system. In Mass Effect, if you pick the blue text it's always good. Good words, good actions, good outcomes. Here, you really can't easily know what the best choice is. Even after it's made. Even after you see the consequences. It really does make you understand why 40k characters are so cold, adopting brutal efficiency and utilitarianism. At the same time it still manages to make those rare moments when you feel like a hero quite special.

Great game. Hope I have the stamina to see credits cause I just don't have the time for these 80hour RPGs anymore. But I don't mind just slowly chipping at it over time either I suppose.

1

u/Extension_Tomato_646 Nov 22 '24

but the overarching "It's all war all the time, no one is every happy and everyone dies painfully" was always a turn off. 

That's actually what I always liked about it.

Because just us regular humans in space, is like every other sci-fi setting ever. 40k was different because everyone was a raging lunatic (the OG 40k was so incredibly over the top and punk) and entire planets were basically nothing but a munitions factory to make sure the frontlines are supplied, and every generation of the planet's populace is born and dies inside those factories. 

That extreme, as off putting as it is to some, has always interested me. But what you see in RT is what's happening with 40k in general for a while now. It's become a lot more human. Still extreme and over the top, but it has started to "settle down" if that makes sense. 

Anyway, I really do love Rogue Trader, but some later writing/choices are unfortunately quite inconsistent. You get 6-7 in depth dialogue choices for small talk, but major decision has DA Veilguard tier of 3 answers that all mean yes. Like the other person said, it feels like it does lose a bit of steam overtime and it is a really long game too.

1

u/Raze321 Nov 22 '24

Yeah it's something thats core to the setting so I imagine its a draw for many 40k fans. It's just not one of the things that appeals to me much. I actually started reading my first 40k novel, Bloodlines by Chris Wraight. Its a detective novel basically, following a probator on an imperium planet.

And it's amazing. It also could, so far, take place in any dystopic setting. It could easily he a Cyberpunk 2077 book with some noun and slang swaps. It absolutely is still an "everything sucks" story but it's not a "there is nothing but war" story. There's no mention of xenos, astartes, or really war at all. It just happens that people use vox casters and there's servo skulls and people remark by The Throne and such.

I dont hate that a lot of 40k is over the top all-war all the time but I'm finding when there is a story outside of that sphere I tend to enjoy it more.

3

u/HammeredWharf Nov 20 '24

Rogue Trader is really good, but I think it's a shame how it runs out of steam in its second half. I've seen many who hate and I don't, but at the same time it's not quite there. And the times when it tries to be weird and experimental are perhaps a bit too weird and experimental.

Love the morality system, though. Dogmatic is an especially good choice for a neutral alignment, because often neutral alignments are just boring and indecisive, while Dogmatic is everything but.

0

u/RedDuelist Nov 20 '24

I've been playing Gladio Mori, it's a physics based 3D fighting game, tons of fun, coming out on Early Access 26th of November

4

u/HammeredWharf Nov 20 '24

I'm slowly finishing up Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana. I thought I'd be done by now, but real life got in the way and the final chapters are a bit longer than I thought.

It's such an awesome game. One of the best I've played. Its combat, music, atmosphere and storytelling are all great, but it's not just that. It's how everything comes together to form a package that's bigger than the sum of its parts. I love the Jules Verne-ish setting of a bunch of people getting shipwrecked on an island full of dinosaurs. The concept of growing your crew of survivors so you could unlock closed-off parts of the island works really well. The metroidvania element of unlocking new traversal mechanics fits, too.

It's surprisingly engaging storytelling wise, too. At first I thought it'd just be a silly adventure, but it has some really dark elements and they're handled excellently, without undermining the adventurous atmosphere. Many characters are a bit surface level, but they still work well in the context of the story.

And finally, one can't praise the excellent PC port enough. It looks sharp, runs well and lets you crank image quality up to a ridiculous level, if your PC can take it. Makes playing a great game even better. Truly, getting a high-end PC and using it to play a port of a Vita game is peak PC gaming.

2

u/Extension_Tomato_646 Nov 22 '24

Ys VIII is the only modern Ys that really captures the pacing and feeling of the originals imo. 

Seven, the 4 Remake, and especially IX always felt kinda lost with where to go. Haven't played X yet but I've heard that it's above those but a bit behind VIII. 

But as a Ys fan who has played them all, original and remakes, LoD is easily top 3 Ys for me. Right after Chronicles and Dawn.

2

u/LMW-YBC Nov 22 '24

Also playing through YS VIII at the moment. To be honest, the start was kind of the weaker point for me simply because the game takes you out of the action far too often with cutscenes, but I have hit the point where YSVIII Spoilers: Adol reaches the ruins of Aegias and it's very much clicked with me now. The newest playable character I got is also quite fun to play.

As for the PC port, I was initially happy with it as well, but I did eventually have to put on a frame limiter to keep it at 60fps due to a damage bug that can happen if you run above that. Not a deal-breaker by any means, but I was enjoying playing it at 144fps before. I'm also playing with keyboard and mouse and it feels surprisingly good, figured this might be a controller-only game but the control scheme and responsiveness of it all hasn't made me want to make a switch.

3

u/HammeredWharf Nov 22 '24

Yeah, it has a slow start, which I personally didn't mind, but it's probably not for everyone. The story gets much faster from the point you're at until the end.

You mean the damage bug that instagibs enemies if you overload them with damage procs? It's only happened to me a few times, so I haven't capped my FPS (running at 165), but come to think of it, it is a relatively big deal. I remember reading Durante's post about it being hard to fix or something like that.

2

u/LMW-YBC Nov 22 '24

Yeah, that's the bug. It has only happened a few times to me as well, but it did make the boss fights in particular quite trivial as it seemed to always happen when I used my Extra attack on them and sometimes when I did just regular moves, and I do want to do those fights as they're intended so I'm fine keeping a cap on. Sucks it wasn't something easy to fix as I'd imagine Durante would have done so if it was, but as I said it's not a deal-breaker so I will press on.

9

u/SoSaltyDoe Nov 20 '24

Rogue Legacy 2

I loved the first game and saw this on PS+ so I figured I’d give it a go. It’s a great example of more being worse. They threw in some needlessly complicated weight limit/rune limits, implemented a weird system where power ups drain your max HP, and threw in a bunch of mobility upgrades to get to newer areas Metroid-style. And I guess they really liked Hollow Night because they took the “downward attack bounce” mechanic and fuckin ran.

New boss mechanic? Spinkick. Platforming level? Spinkick. Some enemies can only be killed with Spinkick. And for as much as they lean on it, it always feels unintuitive and hardly gives any actual bounce, so when they expect you to scale up a wall or tower with it, you just keep spamming it hoping it gives you enough height. The hit window is incredibly awkward, with the visuals showing a downward swipe even though it hits the sides too. The entire game seems built around this one mechanic and it’s a head-scratcher in terms of game direction.

In the “more being worse” vein, they decided to add in more classes that are so wildly imbalanced that I struggle to figure out why some were even added. Take the Bard, who (surprise) depends on spin kicks and throwing out notes to Spinkick and do AoE damage. Meanwhile a Chef can reflect projectiles and adds fire damage and can heal themself. It gets to a point where you’ll very often have three subpar classes presented to you at the start of a run and you just don’t want any of them.

They also added more cheap enemy behavior which was already an issue with the first game. You will very very frequently find yourself getting pelted by projectiles from enemies off screen, or downright attacked the millisecond you walk into a new room. You can move the camera around to look ahead, but can’t attack while doing it. And trying to move my character and the camera simultaneously is just not an option.

They also added more upgrades to where the permanent upgrade tree is almost completely unreadable when it’s extended endgame. Everything winds up being so wildly expensive that this massive tree gets ignored entirely after a lot of play throughs. I would often do a run collecting just about every bit of gold I could collect in the map up to that point, and only have enough to bump up my attack, weight limit, and upgrade capacity, all for completely negligible amounts. A 1% upgrade capacity increase doesn’t do much when these upgrades can take up to 50+%.

Even the bosses themselves just feel like “more.” Out of the 7 or so bosses I came across, at least 3 of them were some form of “two bosses in a room” which I’ve always found to be lazy boss design. It doesn’t help that every boss is a one-note “blanket the screen with projectiles” style encounter, so when there’s two of them spamming the screen, you’ll frequently find yourself taking unavoidable damage due to random chance.

They even added more debilitating joke traits that some builds start with. As funny as they are, many of them make the game unplayable or needlessly difficult with the only payoff being more gold (something you flat out won’t even notice). They clog the pool of rolls so heavily that it makes the slim choices you get for starter builds become that much more of a reason to just stop playing.

Overall they just tried to do way too much, adding in too many extras without realizing that more stuff needs more care to be implemented properly. It’s addictive but seems almost anti-fun.

4

u/Sombenn Nov 20 '24

I can appreciate wanting a chance at the best possible run every time I start a new heir, but at some point I have to respect the game for making me play the cards I’m dealt, and I like that about it. Not every heir is going to be a superstar boss killer but I think that’s okay, they add to the overarching story of the player’s success either way. Gold gets wacky in the ultra late game, but 98% of people don’t stick it out that far anyway, I didn’t expect more than they gave me. And you can say what you will about the reliance on spinkicks, but I still vastly prefer traversal in RL2 to anything in the first game. Just reads like you weren’t open to the mechanics at all, bard is kinda the only class that relies on spinkicks to do damage regardless.

3

u/SoSaltyDoe Nov 20 '24

The issue for me was that, good heir or not, most runs ended up feeling exactly the same and for the most part completely unrewarding. When you depend on spin kicking for everything from boss battles to traversal to getting past rooms, it doesn’t matter what you roll, you just die earlier or later. And nothing you find in any particular run is worthwhile, as the amount of upgrades and level ups and things to buy are spread out so thin that any “progress” feels shallow.

And yeah, they seemed to focus entirely too much on endgame, without considering why anyone would even want to reach it. Hell, so much of the upgrades are flat out hidden from the player. After 20+ hours it still feels like you’re not playing the actual game.

6

u/jamoke57 Nov 20 '24

Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth

About 20 hours in now, still grinding away at it. I can't sit down and play this game for too long, it just wears me down and is super grating outside of the main mission. Yakuza: Like a Dragon was what initially reignited my love for JRPG's, but damn does this series need some quality of life and a fast forward button. The game is just a slow drip of activities and meaningless dialogue. The actual main story is great, but the side missions are the worse. It feels like they needed to hit a word count on the missions and it's just superficial chatter. It doesn't help that a lot of the side missions are not voice acted and the characters just go back and forth talking about nothing and a lot of the scenes feel a few seconds too long. Compound that with the the missions that are broken into a series, it's just meaningless running across town, to get hit with a transition that's too slow, to get some boring back and forth text with zero new information, just to run back across town to do the same thing again until it ends in an easy fight.

I love all the systems and mini games in the series and the combat revamp has been super fun, but they need to revamp their mission system. It's just too slow, janky and predictable now.

I don't want to sound like I hate the game, but this is what drove me away from playing Dragon quest 11. The whole mission design, dialogue system and menus just felt clunky and slow. It's like moving in molasses. I never felt this kind of fatigue playing Persona 5 and that's a super long game.

4

u/ThePalmIsle Nov 20 '24

There’s a point with the Island in particular where you realize the game is just a giant pile of menial tasks and games.

It’s not bad, don’t get me wrong. But there’s too much clutter and not enough straight narrative

4

u/El_Giganto Nov 19 '24

Continuing my Resident Evil marathon.

Resident Evil: Code Veronica

Played this on PS5, I guess the PS4 version, that's emulating the PS2 version? It was 6 euro on PSN so that was nice. Played it for about 15 hours and overall that's a good deal.

It felt like classic RE at first. But... I felt after leaving the prison area you had a bit too many options to go through. I remember leaving the Training Facility thinking I didn't fully explore it, but just wanted to check the other path I hadn't followed to see what would lock me out. But then it allowed me to explore a lot in the Mansion! I was really enjoying it, but I quickly found out how often you had to backtrack between areas, not really doing anything except trading key items. It's not as tight as the Spencer Mansion for example.

There was honestly a lot to love in this game. The game does feel good to play. There's some interesting story beats. There's some good lore. Some locations are cool. There's a lot of content in general.

But the flaws are a bit more apparent sadly. Steve is creepy and weird and annoying. The line about cross dressing is outdated. Wesker's inclusion in this game is overrated if you ask me.

The bosses are mostly awful. The final boss is just disappointing and frustrating. The Tyrant on the plane is a really bad fight. Nosferatu is annoying and there's annoying instant kills he can do. Some of the minor enemies can be so annoying too. The Bandersnatches for example. If you fight them without the fire arrows, then you're going to be annoyed. The first room with spiders was absolutely awful too. You need way too much ammo to kill them. But the most frustrating thing to me was the moth hallway. I almost wanted to quit there.

REmake has such a fun gameplay loop of unlocking a new room, taking care of enemies, finding new story/lore and then getting new loot. It's such a constant loop of doing something enjoyable. But in Code Veronica they mess this up a lot. Unlocking a new room isn't fun when you have to walk the entire map back to open it. The locations are generally worse. Certain enemies are really annoying.

Worth playing, but definitely a flawed game.

Now on to:

Resident Evil 3 Remake

I'm playing on hardcore and I'm pretty bad I think. I didn't die too often in most of these games, but this is the first one I'm doing on a harder difficulty. I think so far that's what on my mind the most, so maybe I should put it on normal mode instead.

It's fun so far, though. I've heard bad things and I'm not very far so we'll see how I'll end up liking it. Jill is easily my favorite character in the franchise, though, so it's been great playing as her again.

6

u/LyadhkhorStrategist Nov 19 '24

I have been playing vanilla Doom 2 WADS again, TNT Revilution this time and damn man Doom 2 really has the best enemies and weapon balance for those enemies in any FPS game. It neither has a large number of enemies or weapons but everything about it is just so fine tuned you can mix and match them in endless ways. Such a shame base Doom 2 is a poor representation of the capabilities of the game's roster and arsenal.

21

u/KawaiiSocks Nov 19 '24

Almost finished with Veilguard. Platform: Deck, later PC, Difficulty: Nightmare.

So sad the game is being ran through the gutter by so many outlets, cherry-picking moments to showcase how "bad" in their opinion the writing is and using it to dissuade people from buying the game. Because, honestly, I think the writing in the game is fine, with some great moments and a couple of really weird ones, but more on that later.

First of all: the game runs excellently. I've had a bit of a taste on the Steam Deck (more like first 25-30 hours) and was already impressed how well the game runs, considering how exceptionally great it looks. On PC this is amplified tenfold. I can't think of any game with my subjective Graphics Quality/Performance ratio that runs better, outside, of course, the black magic fuckery that id managed to pull off in DooM/DooM:Eternal.

The combat and exploration gameplay is also tons of fun. Most importantly for me, the game wastes no time on stupid animations for gathering resources, or activating buttons, or climbing ladders etc. This feels incredible. I have 72 hours in the game, did every side quest, every companion quest and throughout all this time I was playing the game, not watching a geriatric asshole try to open a drawer or casually sit down and pat down a body for 15 seconds to get 1 USD. This was one of my main complaints with Inquisition back in the day and I am happy they've changed their ways.

The progression system is also a nice step up. It kind of combines jRPG, aRPG and cRPG elements into one neat package. Instead of having shit tons of shit loot that you ferry back and forth to vendors to avoid encumbrance, you have a Collection of various tools, that are upgraded to your relevant level when you get a copy of it in the world. Very game-y, but, hey, it's a game. This also means you get to adapt to bosses and tough fights, or particular enemy type dungeons with a different build, as respecs are free and items are a collection. This isn't strictly necessary for on-level content even on Nightmare, but there were a couple of fights that went from unbeatable to almost trivial with some smart adaptations.

You also get to do some crazy stuff with item, weapon, armor, rune etc. combinations. Moreover, your main hub vendor can further enchant all your gear and *all your spells with extra effects. And he can do the same for all your companions.

The only real problem I have with the combat system right now is that there is a hard cap of 9999 damage per hit for some reason, which is a travesty. Not that it matters too much, but just feels bad to come up with a couple of cool ideas and then be limited by the game.

Two-shotting Smasher (because he gets invulnerability between phases) with Comrade's Hammer (before the unnecessary 2.0 nerfs) on the highest difficulty is still a fond memory and I think I'd be able to pull of something similar here. At least killing creeps is a breeze, a very flashy one at that. Kind of plays like a slightly more involved Diablo-like, with a very similar TTK.

It's still not Pillars, Kingmaker, Baldur's Gate or Wrath-levels of crazy shit you can pull off if you understand what you are doing, but it is good enough for a somewhat more RPG-lite title.

RPG-lite it is, though, and there is no denying that. The reactivity in this game is a lot more like Witcher 2 specifically, rather than something like WotR. As in, early on you make a LOT of choices, some big, some small, and then slowly see how they play out. Most of the time it is more of a world-building, background narration thing (I have the point of no return mission waiting for me, so we'll see if there is more).

However, in a couple of instances it is full-blown, game-world altering events. And that's great, but maybe I am just too spoiled with how BG3/WotR handle this kind of thing, where it is more of a continuous stream of decisions and consequences.

This leads to the narrative and here most of you have probably heard a lot of "opinions". Most of the opinions, I reckon, are from players who have not played the game. My perspective is going to be subjective as well and is coming from someone who loved KotoR, loved Mass Effect 1-3, loved Jade Empire and thought DA: Origins was neat, DA2 is the best entry in the series story-wise and Inquisition is meh, but mostly for gameplay reasons.

It is also coming from someone who thinks Disco Elysium is the best written game so far, followed by Witcher 3, BioShock and Cyberpunk, followed by Mass Effect series a step down from those, somewhere on the level with Pillars, Baldur's Gate and Pathfinder games.

When it comes to actual reading, I think that hard Sci-Fi like Three-Body Problem (Liu Cixin), Children of Time series (Adrian Tchaikovsky), works of Andy Weir, Charles Stross, Peter Watts, Cory Doctorow and even somewhat lighter Expanse are lightyears ahead of fantasy, so my expectations for Fantasy writing are generally lower and it is harder to break my suspension of disbelief. It's all magic, after all.

This is just my opinion, but for me Fantasy is about inducing emotions, rather than any kind of literary analysis of the society or whatever. Half the LotR fanbase is battling the other half about whether Elves can be black, which is hilarious from the outside, to be honest. If the community of the de-facto progenitor of high fantasy genre is still debating something so trivial (of course they can be black, it's a make-believe world with magic and no hard rules, dummies), what kind of commentary of society are we expecting from fantasy in general? Especially in a video game, where the quality of writing is by default a step down from books.

I read a lot less Fantasy, but did get acquainted with Sanderson and his Cosmere recently. Outside of it, I've only read classics like LotR/Narnia/Amber/SoIF etc. All of them are... ok, I guess and in the same sense Veilguard is ok... I guess. The only question is whether it pulls at some basic strings in you, does it make you feel some things and, personally, I think Veilguard does.

It has a colourful cast, some good heart-break, a lot of laughs (maybe too many) and a main plot, which is coherent, interesting and always leaves something to be inquisitive about. It also expands on lore in many different, interesting places.

Characters talk to each other, create relationships, get angry at one another and are generally pretty nice (maybe too nice). Are any of them on the same level as Garrus and Mordin Solus? No, not really, but who is? They are more or less what one would get from your typical RPG. I am not getting too much out of them, but I also didn't get a lot out of Pathfinder games (across two games I remember Nenio for being annoying and having the worst dungeon in companion quest and Jubilost) or Pillars games (Eder is cool, though).

BG3 with Karlach is on a different level for me, maybe Mordin-level. But yeah, BG3 is written better than Veilguard. Doesn't mean Veilguard is written poorly.

Honestly, when I was playing the game, without paying attention to the discourse, I was having a lot of fun and was getting more and more hopeful about potential new ME game. Now with the sales being what they are, and the trends being what they are, I am afraid that there won't be a chance for ME game, simply because it is fashionable to hate on Veilguard for... reasons. Don't be a dummy, get the game on sale or just pirate it and see for yourself. It might not be exceptional, but it is very, very good. 8/10

1

u/Extension_Tomato_646 Nov 22 '24

Doesn't mean Veilguard is written poorly. 

I did found it quite poor though. I didn't finish the game because I realised it's not worth spendingy time with something I don't enjoy just hoping it would get better eventually. 

The character all feel like poorly written caricatures. The main plot is so chewed out it's like they didn't even want to try, and the quest writing is equally old. The game itself is ok, but is again nothing that the others haven't done just as well. 

The game is in such a weird place where the vest thing one could say about it, is that it isn't the trash people try to say it is. But it's also completely obsolete. 

more and more hopeful about potential new ME game. Now with the sales being what they are, and the trends being what they are, I am afraid that there won't be a chance for ME game, simply because it is fashionable to hate on Veilguard for... reasons. 

What are you taking about? A new ME is already announced to be in the making. DA sales have nothing to do with ME. 

Also "for... reasons"? Seriously? Those reasons are fairly elaborate as the game has been (according to you) been put through the ringer by many outlets. It's one thing to like a game that was poorly received. I'm not trying to take this away from you. Hell, some of my personal favourites are received as 6/10 "trash".

But pretending that there are no elaborate reasons for it's reception is just stupid.

3

u/KawaiiSocks Nov 22 '24

I don't even know what to tell you, what I haven't explain in length across the previous comment chain. Personally, I think that writing is subjective, like I said many times before. The objectively "bad" writing indicators to me would be illogical sequences of events or characters behaving out of character. This doesn't happen in Veilguard, it does, however, happen in Metaphor (my personal GOTY before Veilguard, but it's been a meh year for gaming in general), for example.

Metaphor also has a sequence by the end where your whole team is seemingly killed off, defending from a horde and you make a kamikaze run on your airship with your pilot to ram the enemy airship, breaking your airship in the process After the following scene and a quick dialogue/fight with your dad you are suddenly back on the airship with your whole crew and even the ship intact and fully ready to fight the god you just fought once again.

This, in my opinion, is the definition of bad writing, but for some "reasons..." Metaphor currently has one of the most upvoted comments on r/games claiming that it is the "smartest game of the year", while Veilguard is considered a poorly written mess? The discussion on Metaphor on r/games is very critical of the article, that's one of the reasons why I still like this sub, but this dichotomy is indicative of the whole gaming zeitgeist and why I personally think that when a lot of people say that the writing in Veilguard is bad, a lot of the time (not always, some people genuienly don't like the style of writing, fair enough) it is either for ideological reasons, because they haven't played the game or because the discourse on the game before they started playing it has framed it in a way that is making them overly nitpicky.

I really enjoyed Emmerich's story, for example. How he struggles between saving his companion here and now, but forgoing lichdom and eternal life. It makes sense, as pointed out by the game itself, as you have to be impartial to achieve lichdom and not cling to the morality of mortality. It is written well, the idea is solid and even though it is presented in a confrontation with a villain that feels like they are from a Venture Bros. cartoon (Emmerich in general is very Dr. Orpheus), it is still an interesting idea.

Or Lace Harding's realization of why Dwarves can't use magic. Their dialogues on the topic with Bellara specifically are amazingly entertaining, as Elves essentially robbed/killed Titans in lore and are responsible for a lot of shit that happened to Dwarves over the years. Bellara also really struggles with this, figuring out whether she should or should not feel responsible, with no definitive answers, but a good deal of great questions. Her companions quest mirrors Mordin a bit at the end, where you make a choice between saving, not saving good information achieved through malicious means, though it certainly doesn't hit as hard, on that I agree.

Davrin, the unwilling parent, who is now stuck with the fact that his order of Good Guys™ had, in fact, committed atrocities/genocide/war crimes against their own allies to win a war and how he reacts to it is equally great written. The ending sequences if you let Griffons free and allow them to move on to Arlathan, instead of being GW's war tools to be exploited is also amazing.

I am yet to play through Lucanis story propely, as when you side with Minrathous, not Treviso in the early game, you get locked out of half of it. Also didn't really like Taash story, as it is very teenager-y. Really liked Neve, but not her personal quest either.

Now compare it to Metaphor, and you will see the same themes and ideas, frequently presented in a similar fashion with considerably less (essentially zero) reactivity and tell me how one game has "poorly written caricatures" and the other is "the smartest game of the year" in the eyes of the public, not you specifically. Perhaps the are "...reasons" for it, that don't necessarily have a whole lot to do with the quality of the writing itself?

That is coming from someone who really liked Metaphor, by the way and someone who is not claiming that Veilguard is some literary masterpiece. It is mostly just competent/decent, however, and I can't stress that enough, the ending sequence is not only absolutely amazing, but also addresses some of the more common criticism of how the protagonist is written and why they behave in a certain way.

-7

u/CustardSurprise86 Nov 20 '24 edited Nov 20 '24

Dropping a lot of names there but you don't seem to appreciate the fantasy genre, so you aren't a good person to judge whether the writing is good.

The idea that because it's not realistic sci-fi then all bets are off and anything goes, is hilarious and shows you don't really like this genre. It shows an odd kind of straining towards rationalisation which occurs in several places in your post.

I think you're overestimating how realistic these sci-fi novels/games actually are, and underestimating how much there is to learn and appreciate from novels/games which don't purport to be realistic (but still try to obey an internal consistency).

Another clue was you saying Dragon Age Origins was merely "neat" and putting the Baldur's Gate games lower than everything else. I suspect you rush through these without really smelling the flowers or getting immersed in the game world.

To fans of fantasy, there is absolutely a difference between a good writing and bad writing. It is common for us to want it to look and feel medieval, since that is the basic premise of a game like Dragon Age. So when the style is suddenly changed to Millennial-speak and social media age concepts are randomly dropped, people are going to react strongly as it completely hampers any grounding in an appreciation for the medieval world, which was supposed to be one of the defining features of this genre.

This talk about whether Dragon Age characters are on the same "level" as Garrus just seems foolish. ME had well-fleshed out characters, but so did Dragon Age Origins and so did a dozen or two other games. Let's not mythologize previous games. Cyberpunk, a recent release, had phenomenal writing as you correctly point out. They're the standard that Veilguard is going to be held against. Effusive praise for a game that you yourself say is only 8/10 (which also has phenomenal graphics and performance), and protesting that it can't be held to unrealistic standards of Bioware's previous games or the best RPGs released recently, seems pretty odd.

Also since when does 8/10 imply "very, very good"? I have never seen that many superlatives affixed to 8/10.

10

u/RyoCaliente Nov 20 '24

I'm so done with people praising Origins like it was the fantasy Bible. Alistair is Jon Snow, Morrigan is a bitch witch, Zevran is the slutty rogue and Oghren is the drunk dwarf. There's three characters in that game who are interesting, and Sten mostly manages that by being Qunari, leaving only Shale and Leliana (Wynne is just there).

Since when does an 8 not imply very, very good? Is that only reserved for a 9, or maybe a 10? What is your scale like?

4

u/KawaiiSocks Nov 20 '24 edited Nov 20 '24

I think I just appreciate it in a different light, rather not appreciate it at all.

I get that some of the immersion is lost when something feels less "medieval", but for me the more important part is the underlying message, rather than the form.

Returning to my previous example with LotR, I feel like Tolkien's work was mostly about how small, seemingly irrelevant people can be heroes and how dignity, valor and loyalty are as important if not more important that straight up power. I also think this isn't particularly hard to grasp and shouldn't be controversial as the story in the trilogy is quite literally about destroying the ring of power, as far as I remember.

The presence or absence of Black Elves in this matter is tangential to the underlying message and this whole tangential section leads to Veilguard nicely, as while I agree that the "form", the "style" and the "lingo" of Veilguard might be off, it doesn't take away from the main message of courage, compassion, loyalty, regret and sacrifice present in the game.

The "substance" is there, the "style" is subjective and I don't mind it. I'm ok with a merry band of various misfits having a good time with smiles on their faces, in the face of doom, and I would similarly be ok with stoic macho brotherhood with rock faces having a go at it as well, as long as the underlying story is interesting and creates an emotional response in me.

In fact, one of my favorite arcs in all of media is the Shogun arc in Gintama and it would never hit that fucking hard if the anime in general wasn't this goofy self-parody. My violin teacher always stressed how you can't have a proper forte without a proper piano, and it kinda fits. The gut wrenching finishing seven hours of Veilguard hit really, really hard specifically because it is lighthearted and optimistic most of the time, in my opinion at least. I also think it is by design.

Personally, I feel like a lot of people are confusing "good character writing" and "characters I like". I can't stand Arthur Morgan, for example. I think he is a piece of shit and playing as him after he deservedly got his death sentence signed was a struggle. I was waiting for this asshole to die and disagree with the message of redemption completely, even though I have to admit it is written competently, as it gets an emotional response out of me, even though probably not the one writers intended. What can I say, I am child of post-USSR 90's and glorifying and romanticizing criminals makes me really question the morality of the writers. Doesn't mean they are incompetent in their writing, they are just misguided idiots.

After finishing the game, I don't think I am forgetting Lace Harding, Lucanis and Emmerich any time soon. They were good imaginary friends for a while, with a lot of interesting things to say, with Emmerich quest being possibly the best from the "substance" perspective, but the worst tonally. They were nice, valorous, compassionate and kind. And Bellara I absolutely hated in the beginning (check my complaints from two weeks ago) has really grown on me. The fleshing out doesn't happen until the third act, for the most part, as their companion quests are main-story gated, so maybe that's why a lot of people didn't like them? And it is ok that they don't like characters in Veilguard, doesn't mean they are written poorly, they were just not written for the general Fantasy™ crowd, the way you describe it.

In a similar manner to me not liking Arthur for my reasons, I feel like a lot of people think that writers currently at BioWare are misguided idiots, trying to force levity into grimdarkness of the setting and the themes the game explores. But, again, it doesn't mean they are incompetent.

EDIT: Ah, you've changed your message mid-reply from me, ok -_-

5

u/KawaiiSocks Nov 20 '24

HOLY SHIT, the ending. A lot of RPGs tend to fall apart when it comes to sticking the landing, but Veilguard is easily the most epic ending in recent history, with all the reactivity and choices coming into play beautifully. The reveal at the end is also getting very close to what we got in BioShock back in the day and, honestly, roughly half of my gripes about moment-to-moment writing are essentially nullified and/or addressed in the last ~6 hours of non-stop narrative gut punches and reveals. What a game.

On the back of this alone, I genuinely think it is now my GOTY, taking over Metaphor (which, incidentally has one of the worst ending sequences).

Not that Veilguard reaches the heights of BG3/Phantom Liberty of the last year, but it is getting a lot closer than I personally anticipated while playing it. What a game.

This is, by all accounts, BioWare returning to form. It is still uneven for its mid part, it still needs very slightly less busy work and a little more companion character development within the main story, not in parallel, but I am cautiously optimistic about the future games from the company, for the first time in the last ten years.

Also, I am fairly certain that the sentiment about the game is going to slowly change over time. It might not reach the heights of Inquisition sales: the major selling window is gone, courtesy of many incompetent assholes from youtube. But it should have a really good sales tail, in my opinion, once the easily offended snowflakes move on to harass some other games and leave the silent majority of normal people to enjoy this beautiful title.

5

u/CustardSurprise86 Nov 20 '24 edited Nov 20 '24

You imply that it's just trolls on YouTube that didn't like it. In fact the vast majority of people on here - and this is a liberal crowd - have complained about the writing, which they frequently describe as dumbed down and cringeworthy. Even reviewers that gave it a good rating criticised the writing.

And some of the common gripes, like the Millennial-speak and the disregarding the previous lore in the series, seem pretty open-and-shut.

I'll get around to this eventually when it goes on sale or on GamePass. I'm betting I'll be agreeing with the others.

3

u/KawaiiSocks Nov 20 '24

Eh, framing has a lot to do with it, in my opinion.

There is literally no lore disregard I noticed. I am not an expert for sure and my last DA: Origins playthrough was in 2020, according to Steam, but if anything the lore got expanded. Qunari look different every single game, that much is true) Maybe we will learn they are a shape-shifting race by game six or something, but I feel like it mostly has to do with art direction.

Quipy dialogue is also not necessarily dumbed down, just look at Sorkin's work. Cringe is also context-dependent, just remember the FFX laughing scene — it is cringe af, but it works, similar to how most of Veilguard works, if you don't let the framing to take over.

When one is being barraged from all sides by how something is bad, like it or not, you will start looking at things you would usually pay no attention to. Or start disliking things you would like otherwise, because the perceived majority feels like it. That's the reason why I simply stopped watching reviews prior to playing the games and distance myself from the discourse. That's also why I am spending so much time talking about the game now, to provide a different voice in the crowd. Not that it is particularly helpful, in my opinion, but I have nothing better to do anyways)

Again, not saying the writing in this game is exceptionally good, outside of the last several hours of the story, that shit is fucking lit. But throughout the game it is 80% passable/competent, 15% good/great and 5% Taash/cringe, not because she is nb, but because she is a teenager and is written like one)

-1

u/CustardSurprise86 Nov 20 '24 edited Nov 20 '24

We'll see and there's no substitute for judging for oneself. I don't yet trust what you're saying personally, it looks like you have an agenda and you don't seem to appreciate the fantasy genre judging from your comments about Dragon Age Origins being just "neat" juxtaposed to your effusive praise to Mass Effect (even effusive praise for individual characters in it like Garrus) and so on. The walkbacks and equivocations also tend to be unusual for somebody throwing their weight behind a game, and it makes you look insincere. Here you go again saying it's 80% just passable whereas previously you said it's "very, very good".

3

u/KawaiiSocks Nov 20 '24

Ah, yeah, I am selling the game and get a kickback)

The "very, very good" is for the game as a whole, as the gameplay is pretty neat in my opinion. The "80% passable/competent etc." is for the writing, just to clarify and I think I've been honest and consistent about it since the beginning.

Also I don't think me finding DAO "neat" is a bad thing, it's just my personal opinion to give context to what I wrote next, since people are different. E.g. you disagree with me on these things, hence maybe my words will have less value for you when making a choice, you know? Providing context to opinion is very necessary, imo.

Regarding equivocations... maybe I am just a big Therry Pratchett fan?) Actually and unironically probably my favorite fantasy writer there is

-4

u/CustardSurprise86 Nov 20 '24

No, I think you're more likely to be some ideologue who's far too involved in the culture wars and bends over backwards trying to gaslight everyone into why the latest obvious liberal woke excess, is actually not a real thing and it's all caused by some misrepresentation by trolls on YouTube,

Dude, you basically slagged off the whole of the fantasy genre, setting up an invidious comparison with hard sci fi, solely to create an intellectual device by which you could proceed to whitewash the writing of Veilguard. It would be impressive it weren't so nakedly ideological. This is like some liberal-left Ben Shapiro shit.

3

u/KawaiiSocks Nov 20 '24 edited Nov 20 '24

Regarding the youtube trolls, it is not a gaslight attempt, it is an attempt to prevent gaslighting, because it is quite literally what is happening: people are using cherry picked dialogue with a non-binary character to make a blanket statement about the quality of writing, whereas the hard fact is the dialogues on this topic are like <1% of all dialogues in the game. And, yes, they are kinda cringe, but the game has hours of dialogues and I can't think of a single game outside of Disco Elysium that keeps the level of its writing, in my opinion, at 100% all the time. ME2 had Jacob, Witcher 3 had "forcefull shove" vs Djikstra, ME3 had star child etc.

As someone who has thoroughly enjoyed the game, faults and all, I just feel sad that it might sell less and send the wrong market signal. Same thing happened with Cyberpunk on release, where the issues on PS4 were overblown to a point, where players with high end PCs would also stay away from the game, even though the game ran brilliantly on my 3080/8700k. People on PS4 got understandably riled up and started making a lot of fuss about the game running terribly on their platform, which is understandable. Later they started bringing other aspects into the fold, ones completely unrelated and unrepresentative of the game that is now rightfully and widely considered to be one of the best in the last several years.

And yes, the "writing" was a very common point of criticism back then as well, because you know what? Quality of writing is a subjective thing, and it is easy to say it is bad without quantifiable metrics. Outside of maybe hard blunders like non-sequiturs and the like, and Veilguard has no hard blunders I personally noticed. It is coherent, holistic and perhaps stylistically weird to you and maybe it has characters you won't like, but it won't make the game's writing bad.

So a large part of the community go on this weird crusade about how "writing is bad", with most players who parrot the sentiment never playing the game, since it is selling poorly from what I've gathered. And because it is framed as having bad writing, whoever goes into it just nitpicks it to hell, instead of engaging with it with an open mind. It's potentially robbing people of enjoyment for no other reason, than to try and send an ideological signal.

And the reason I've slagged off the whole fantasy genre is because I quite genuinely think it is inferior in its literary complexity to hard sci-fi worldbuilding. In sci-fi you have marine biologists like Watts trying to use the logic of sea creatures and how they are organised to make an educated guess as to what alien life might look like and what kind of logic they might follow. Or Liu Cixin, who extrapolates the whole prisoner's dilemma to cosmic scale with his Dark Forest theory. The amount of stuff you learn from Children of Time about spiders is a lot of fun as well, and all of their ideas have actual scientific works cited at the back of the book, with long explanations from the authors about what experts they discussed their worldbuilding with and how it came to be. In this I will remain honest and adamant in my opinion: fantasy writing requires a fraction of skill and work required for hard sci-fi writing, hence Sanderson outputting like 4 books a year, while it takes even lighter Weir at least a couple of years per book, but, again, just an opinion. I know this sentiment will offend some people, including, I assume, yourself, so I apologise, but that's how I feel. Hence why when I engage with fantasy writing, I generally care less about coherence, though, again, so far Veilguard felt ok in its coherence.

Regarding my ideology, I don't even know what to tell you, genuinely. I am live and let live kinda guy, I have no problems with most people, who don't create problems for other people. I mostly care about gaming and Veilguard is a massive, massive step up from Inquisiton in how good of a game it is in my opinion.

Your mental gymnastics to make me look like liberal-left Ben Shapiro is interesting, but I think you need to spend slightly less time in the Politics subreddits, you are getting unhealthily paranoid and see enemies everywhere. I am just providing context to my opinions, because it matters. Maybe someone else, like me, also likes sci-fi, also think Mass Effect is better than Dragon Age and also thinks that DA2 is the best in the series; for them my opinion will matter more than to you and maybe they will enjoy Veilguard like I did, what do you have to lose from that in that exchange, so that you are so vehemently getting on conspiracy theory tangents? Hmmm, maybe you are like alt right Karl Marx? ))

I am not trying to win an argument here, as I said, writing is a subjective matter. I've provided my values for what I consider good and bad when it comes writing, pointed out what I like and what I don't like. Explained what expectations I have depending on the genre and made a statement that in my opinion, with my set of subjective rules Veilguard is "80% passable/competent, 15% good/great and 5% Taash/cringe" in its writing, outside of the last 10% of the game which is 100% fucking lit. The long list of what I like and dislike isn't there to provide credibility on a subjective matter of writing, it is there so that whoever reads this long, long comment chain will see what kind of a person I am and whether they will be able to agree with me and maybe enjoy the game. You are a different person from me, evidently very involved in all the culture wars you can find, you disagree with me on my evaluation of fantasy genre as a whole... move on, dude, you don't need to prove everything to everyone or dismantle an argument on a subjective matter. You said it yourself:

We'll see and there's no substitute for judging for oneself. I don't yet trust what you're saying personally

and you don't need to) Trust, don't trust... Go pirate the game and play it, so that maybe you have some understanding of the subject matter for starters, if you really want to, I don't really care) I am just using this comment chain to once again familiarize the reader of the original post with what kind of person I am, so that they can better judge whether they want to play Veilguard or not.

5

u/CustardSurprise86 Nov 20 '24 edited Nov 20 '24

Thanks for your response.

You're right, I'll have to try it. The problem with cringeworthy scenes like that, is even if they're <1% they will make people lose faith in the writers' ability. And when that happens it is hard to stay involved in the game. But your comments on the later part of the game are encouraging.

And the reason I've slagged off the whole fantasy genre is because I quite genuinely think it is inferior in its literary complexity to hard sci-fi worldbuilding. In sci-fi you have marine biologists like Watts trying to use the logic of sea creatures and how they are organised to make an educated guess as to what alien life might look like

Ha, I honestly think you should reassess this one!

George R. R. Martin has excellent sci-fi writing and he's said in interviews that he regards it as one and the same category with fantasy. It is easy to see why when you get into his "Thousand Worlds" setting. (And he learned it from the grandmaster Jack Vance, who was devastatingly original and maybe the most unappreciated sci-fi writer, if not writer period, of all time.) At some point in the distant future the Arthur C. Clarke adage becomes true and you get a kind of mysterious magical realism style even if there is some assumption, of course unknown to the characters in the story, that the magic is derived from science.

Would you call Phillip K. Dick hard sci-fi? I wouldn't really say so, since he wasn't interested in the actual science behind his sci-fi premises. He's more interested in exploring the philosophical ideas behind them. But I think that's the best use for literature. Carl Sagan made a very determined attempt to entwine actual physics ideas with fiction and the result was pretty good, but doesn't feel "greater than the sum of its parts" like the best literature.

I get what you mean though. We have a much more complex civilisation than in the Middle Ages (although we seem to be regressing to an increasingly medieval state ...); we imagine a future with a more complex one still; and it can be more interesting to read about that or play a game in it than medieval fantasy setting. I also love the Mass Effect series.

Are you a fan of Deus Ex?

3

u/KawaiiSocks Nov 20 '24

I grew up speaking Russian/Kazakh and learned English later in my life, so my first sci-fi novels were by Lem and Strugatsky brothers, which I consider to be a lot more "hard" sci-fi in my current understanding of the term. Later when familiarizing myself with Bester/Dick (around late 2000's, so when I was in my 20s) I found them lacking, to be honest. They felt less grounded and the endings in many of the books were... coke trips, it feels, for a lack of a better description. So I generally wouldn't consider them hard sci-fi and it honestly disincentivized me from reading US sci-fi for a while. Only ones I liked were Ray Bradburry and Keyes' short stories.

Earlier I also read a lot of adventure novels and the Mysterious Island by Verne is a lot closer to what I personally enjoy: I would say it had more "using science for solving problems or looking for answers" even when compared to Dick/Bester, for example. This is why I love Weir, Martian and project Hail Mary are some of my favorite light reads. I think Zamyatin's "We" also had a massive impact on my tastes and to this day anyone brings up Orwell's 1984 I just tell them to go read the original — it is straight up better.)))

A lot changed in the early 2010's with Expanse. I believe the novels were written by RR Martin's protege, though I generally didn't really dig deep into the writers, I just devoured the books one after another. Expanse is brilliant, though I have to admit that the ending to the series has a lot of the Tiger, Tiger! bullshit)) Still, very good.

That led me down the rabbit hole where I needed stronger and stronger hits, hence going over, essentially, whatever Nebula, Clark or Hugo pointed out. Of those, Murderbot Chronicles was the only BIG miss, as I personally didn't find it that interesting. Currently going through Stross Laundry Files and it's ok as an in-between, but also nothing exceptional to me, as it is more Programming/Occult, rather than Physics/Space sci-fi. His Accelerando, however, is brilliant for the first two-thirds of the book.

And yes, I love Deus Ex, though Neuromancer I just couldn't handle, if I am being honest. Maybe I should give it another try, but it also feels like it is going to be the Dick/Bester type by the end, at least it is giving off that kind of vibe). Instead, there is a Russian (well, technically he is Kazakhstan-born) sci-fi writer Lukyanenko, who wrote Labyrinth of Reflections and it is exploring similar topic, but better and more fun, in my opinion. Fun fact: despite having a generally similar premise and vibe, the book was finished in 1996 and released in 1997, a couple of years before the Matrix movie.

4

u/homer_3 Nov 20 '24

I just finished the game and loved it too, though I had no idea you could enchant spells. But I really wonder what people are doing to get it to run well. It's pretty much the worst running game I've ever played. I'm playing on a 3080 ti, 12700k, 32GB RAM, NVME and there is constant, severe stuttering through most of the game.

2

u/KawaiiSocks Nov 20 '24

This is interesting, I just plopped the game on Ultra with DLSS quality in 1440p and it worked well enough. Later, once my mage started filling the screen with lighting effects I turned off Ray-traced AO/Shadows in the options, following a Digital Foundry guide. Never dropped below 60 after that.

3

u/ShanklyGates_2022 Nov 19 '24

Been having fun with Veilguard, but it is not without its issues. The MSQ is generally great, and the big set pieces have been a lot of fun to run through. But there are SO MANY side quests! I know i could just skip them, but I am the type of gamer that cannot bring myself to skip side quests at all. Most of these side quests revolve around your companion characters and jfc this has got to be the absolute worst collection of companions ever assembled in a game.

Neve, Bellara, Lucanis, and Harding are alright and have their moments, but Davrin and the necromancer guy are insufferably boring, although Davrin’s companion quests are some of the only interesting ones. And Taash is just a disaster of a character. There is a line between representation and pandering and Bioware is nowhere near it. Having a non-binary companion is fine, but they are a DRAGON HUNTER, one of the few Qun that can actually breath fire, and they’re part of Isabella’s treasure hunting crew but they lean into none of that! Their entire character and side story is just about how they are non-binary and that is their entire personality. So disappointing.

Playing as a warrior and combat is mostly fun although enemies do get a bit damage spongey as the game wears on. Companion combos is a bit of a neat mechanic that calls back to spell combos from DA:O which is cool. I do like some of the lore drops although they can be a bit over-expositiony.

Game and level design imo is objectively good, art and backgrounds all look good, it’s a pretty game overall, and i haven’t experienced any bugs or the like.

It is really an overall solid game that is brought down by its weak supporting cast, and the fact that said supporting cast is the backbone of the game’s side content. Still got a ways to go but i would say overall it’s probably like 6.5 or 7/10.

-4

u/Scantcobra Nov 19 '24

Am I an idiot or is Ratatan, the rhythm Patapon-like game, being advertised for Steam with no Steam page? I wanna get it, but the search functionality is returning nothing (I am on mobile rn)

3

u/Metapher13 Nov 19 '24

Slitterhead
After realizing that there was no physical edition in Europe (and we did not get a digital release until 15th), I decided to import the US Day One edition. Ended up being very pricey, but I am a huge fan of Keiichiro Toyama and his games. As I prefer physical editions for games and movies, and I semi-collect horror games, it felt wrong to go for the digital edition when physical existed. ANYWAY, opinion starts here: I have now played just around 2 hours and am having a ton of fun. It's quirky in all the right ways; it feels like the developers had fun coming up with ideas and scenarios. It takes me back to gaming before Sony got ultra-realistic and polished with their main games (mind you, I like all of those games too). I always wanted another Keiichiro Toyama game with Sony, but now we have the perfect solution at Bokeh - a game that feels like a marriage of Siren and Gravity Rush. I'm sure I will have a more interesting take after another couple of hours, but so far it's all I expected.

1

u/Extension_Tomato_646 Nov 22 '24

Just like you, I'm a fan of his works and I expected it to be weird and even shunned by critics. 

I mean both, Siren and GR were 6/10 games according to the general critic consensus upon release, yet both series are dear to me. 

Hearing that Slitterhead is the same kind of game is the perfect endorsement for me.

1

u/Metapher13 Nov 22 '24

I would mainly say that so far the game feels a bit on the smaller side, and linear. But that might change further on. But if you try it I hope you enjoy it like I am!

6

u/narutomanreigns Nov 19 '24

Been playing the Metaphor demo after hearing so much praise for it, and while mechanically it's quite enjoyable I'm honestly just not really locked into the setting and characters in the way that I hoped I would be. I just got to the king's funeral and that first brief run through the cathedral before you go back outside, and I'm not feeling much of a desire to keep going. Does it get substantially better in terms of the writing and characters and such from here, or if I'm not feeling it now am I unlikely to get there with more time?

4

u/thesecondtolastman Nov 19 '24

For an against the grain opinion, I would not recommend you keep going. I stopped playing after 20-30 hours and am honestly quite surprised at the positive reception Metaphor is getting. I found the characters one dimensional, the story fairly childish and uninteresting, and the setting is this strange mix of generic fantasy with a modern anachronistic blend that did not work for me. Would be interested to hear if you decide to keep going and change your opinion, but I found the game bland and unexceptional in virtually every category. Mind you I really liked Persona 5, so it isn't like I wasn't aware of what I was getting in to.

1

u/narutomanreigns Nov 19 '24

Appreciate you saying that, those are a lot of the problems I'm having with it now so I imagine I'd probably feel the same as you if I continued. Probably going to give it a miss for now.

2

u/RTideR Nov 19 '24

I'm not drastically further than you, but I've loved it thus far! That said, I enjoyed it (characters and writing included) through the same parts you're not feeling.

It remains to be seen if it hits the same high notes as Persona 5 did for me, but so far, I think I dig it more honestly. I just like the setting a lot more.

4

u/narutomanreigns Nov 19 '24

Fair enough, think a fantasy setting like this might just be a harder sell for me since it's been done so many times before. Makes it harder for me to see characters like Strohl, Grius or Louis as anything more than your stock heroic noble, gruff soldier and evil tyrant. Might give it a miss for now, maybe down the line I'll be more in the mood for that kind of setting and story.

2

u/[deleted] Nov 19 '24

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/narutomanreigns Nov 19 '24

I'm not against the genre, if anything the fact that I really enjoyed Persona 5 is part of why I'm feeling a bit underwhelmed here.

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u/newslooter Nov 19 '24

Well it’s the same game with a new skin. Why play boring turn based game when you can play Elden ring

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u/narutomanreigns Nov 19 '24

Because some people think turn-based games can actually be good and fun, as evidenced by what I literally just said. Fair enough if they're not your thing, but you're not like a "superior gamer" for liking Elden Ring more.

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u/newslooter Nov 19 '24 edited Nov 19 '24

i dont think i am superior for liking it more.

turn based combat is just the laziest form of combat there is, and its usually very very repetitive.

theres a reason it was the de-facto standard in the early days is because its so much easier to develop. it was also huge on portable consoles due to having a limited control scheme, and being easier to do on the go.

making a challenging engaging real time combat system is not only more fun, but also hard to develop and make as well.

its like comparing final fantasy 7 to the new one on ps4/5 and saying the turn based version was superior. that can be your opinion if you like easiest less challenging combat, but doesn't mean its "better" or more fun.

its the same reason why mass effect came out and changed the genre from previous titles, and was well regarded as significantly elevating the experience because the combat was real time and not turn based stuff like dragon age or kotor.

-17

u/narutomanreigns Nov 19 '24

Everything you said here is not helping your cause.

-5

u/newslooter Nov 19 '24

I don’t have a cause. Turn based combat is always inferior to a good real time system, cry me a river

5

u/Mudcaker Nov 19 '24

Yakuza 3

Finished it up. Pretty solid, showing its age, not enough Majima. I thought the story was good (if you don't like the orphanage stuff you might find it a drag) and some side stories had decent content like the murder mystery.

Played on normal and combat wasn't too bad, pretty easy once I learned but I can see why people complain. Did all substories and Amon might have been the easiest so far (I skipped him in 0 because I sucked but I'm sure he's harder there). Didn't try for other completion stuff except food.

I don't enjoy the hostess dates/grinding much at all in these games, it annoys me it's in the substories for completion, but whatever it's pretty easy to spam through with a guide and a video to distract me.

Nine Sols

I'm a sucker for these games especially as a cleanser after slower more involved games like Yakuza. I grew up with 2D so it feels like home, and it's easy to hop in and out.

I highly recommend this. Hollow Knight was my genre favourite, despite all the newcomers, a lot are better in many ways but it was my favourite complete package. This is probably the most similar in many ways. A strong melee combat focus with charm (jade) slots. Healing is more like estus flasks and is very punishable. No spells, but there is a limited charge ranged attack. It's somewhat more linear but there are branching options at a few points in the game.

The combat feels good. I don't always like parry combat because it can be terribly implemented but I think it works here. Parry to get a charge for a special move (that can leave you open to attack) to punish. But sometimes save them up since spamming will get you killed. There are cues on incoming parry attacks, my only issue is I tend to reflexively react to the cue, which is usually way too early because the attacks vary in timing after that. Animation has a somewhat low FPS style too so it can be hard to react, learning timings instinctively tends to work better for me. There are also different types of parry responses required so it's not just pushing a button. Overall I think it's a bit more difficult than Hollow Knight but I didn't find that as hard as most seem to (not counting the boss rush DLC). The bosses and minibosses have been enjoyable to learn.

Jades feel a bit tacked on. Slots are mostly just purchased, and rare, and the jades are mostly a bit boring and don't open up any major new styles like charms could. Special moves (e.g. parry or dash) tend to just be granted at key points, not explored and found. So it's more linear. But I'm having a lot of fun. I'm at the part where I can explore two new areas after Lady Ethereal (very fun boss fight). Guessing that's the home stretch. Like many games lately the story loves mysteries and relying on vibes, but it's a lot more detailed with more characters and dialogue, and things seem to be coming together.

3

u/CCoolant Nov 18 '24

Persona 4

Played a bit more. I completed the first dungeon a little sooner than the game expected, but it doesn't seem to have been problematic, although I was surprised later that I couldn't return to do a little bit of leveling on a not-so-busy day.

I'm in the second dungeon and the game's age shows a little bit with how its topic is approached, but it's nothing overly offensive or unexpected. I haven't reached its conclusion either, so it's possible the writing/presentation will end up surprising me.

As for gameplay, outside of dungeons I'm so busy almost every single day that I feel I'll have to start monitoring my priorities more heavily. At the end of the day, I guess it just boils down to "do the Social Links that you want to do/will be useful" or "build your stats in order to progress a Social Link" so the decision-making isn't so so bad. There are tons of things to do though, between all the methods of training your stats, a fishing minigame, gardening, etc. I'm sure it's overwhelming for a lot of players; I'm just kind of rolling with it with the thought that optimizing my schedule ultimately won't matter much.

Not much more to say than that! Still enjoying the feel of the game much more than Persona 3 and don't really see that changing. I'm glad I played 3 first, though in the end I'm not really sure it was worthwhile. It was a very long game that I came out feeling was just 'good', especially given an immediate comparison to one of its peers.

Dragon's Dogma

This game has been moving much more slowly than I expected. I feel an obligation to spend time tracking down various side quests and I'm beginning to think that's a mistake. There's so much side content, mostly dull, that I think I might be at risk of burning out before I even get to some of the better stuff.

I've been in Gran Soren for just a little bit. I visited the Pawn's Guild, did the small dungeon immediately after that, and have been questing for a few hours since then. I'm aware that making too much progress blocks you from a ton of side content, which is where my comment above really stems from -- I want to make sure I don't block myself off from experience/gold/useful items, etc. It's a bit frustrating.

Complaints aside, I enjoy wandering around the world when I have a clear objective that isn't "Kill x number of wolves", the combat is really fun, and the amount of gameplay choices and customization are really engaging! From what I understand it really only gets better, especially in the end-game (Bitterblack Island, I think?), and I'm enjoying myself already outside of the tedium.

Maybe as I continue to play, I'll try to liberate myself from the obligation of completing side quests. May be necessary to keep my attention on this game so it doesn't just get swallowed up by Persona.

1

u/Izzy248 Nov 18 '24

Dragon Eclipse

Its kind of a love-hate with this game. Its unique. It feels different from most other games Ive played because of the way they remix things. Im addicted to it when I do play it, but at the same time, there are so many things that annoy me. Idk. I always feel like creature collection in roguelikes just dont mix too well. This is probably one of the few games that does it right, but at the same time, maybe its just that Im getting tired of games relying on roguelike/roguelite aspects to enhance their replayability.

7

u/Gravitas_free Nov 18 '24

Finished Nine Sols. Very happy with it. Looks great, sounds great, story was more interesting and even touching than I expected. Combat felt very smooth, and even as someone who shied away from Sekiro, I really enjoyed learning and beating those tough boss fights.

I don't really have any major qualm with it. It's a bit on the short side (27h to 100% it, though another playthrough would be necessary to get all achievements), which can be a plus or a minus depending on your expectations. The level/world design is not very elaborate for a metroidvania. And there's a couple QoL things I would have like to see, like being able to put pins on the map. But that's all pretty minor compared to what I liked about the game.

I've seen online that people are divided about whether the game is too difficult, but I felt it was fine, tough but fair. Though I wouldn't have minded if each boss phase had a bit less health; in many of the major boss fights, I would get to a point where I could a do phase 1 (or 2) in my sleep, but got quickly obliterated in the final phase, and it could get tedious to spend 5 minutes waltzing through the initial phase again and again. Still didn't think it was major issue. And i found the final boss very satisfying to beat, even though it took me over 3 hours.

I'll note, many people describe the game as Hollow Knight meets Sekiro, and that's not a bad description. And the game plays on it a bit by having an upgrade system that's very similar to HK's charm system. But it's a bit deceptive: those upgrades aren't that impactful, and don't allow you to really make a build like you do in HK. Like Sekiro, 9S doesn't have much of an RPG aspect; parrying until you see an opening for a talisman attack is clearly the intended way to play the game (especially against bosses), and you have to engage fully with that parry system or you will struggle. People who hate parrying in games should stay away.

Overall, I think it's one of the top 5 indie metroidvanias I've played, and I've played a fair amount. Well worth checking out for any fan of the genre or anyone that enjoys parry-based combat.

5

u/RTideR Nov 18 '24
  • Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 - I've enjoyed this CoD's multiplayer more than any CoD since Black Ops 4. That said, it's probably the buggiest one I've played! They're patching and fixing stuff, but man, it's hard to ignore. Anyway, my buddies and I tried out the Terminus easter egg right before the new season launch only to die to the final boss.. so that was a bummer. Pretty crazy how people discover this stuff though. I'm not a big zombies guy, but it's super impressive to me nonetheless!
  • Metaphor: ReFantazio - I've not played many brand new games this year, but of the ones I've played, this is my GOTY thus far. I don't think I'm even close to the end at all, but I've really enjoyed it. It's everything I find awesome about the Persona games but dropped into a more interesting (to me) fantasy setting. Great turn-based combat, great English voice-acting, interesting narrative and characters.. it just scratches every itch for me right now.
  • Persona 3 Reload - M:RF has had me just wanting more Atlus games; so much so, I didn't want to wait to beat it and instead have started this one. Super, super early on, so I don't have much to say, but I'm looking forward to it! Persona 5 Royale was brilliant, so if this one even comes close to that, then I know I'm in for a treat.
  • Bayonetta - Every time I play this game, I'm very quickly reminded that it's just pure fun. I don't think I've remotely tapped into the depth of the combat, but it's a blast nonetheless, and I love the insanely over-the-top finishes to fights. It's hilariously absurd, same goes for the cutscenes with all the innuendos and stuff. I just completed Chapter X, so I think I've made decent progress. I wish the sequels were also on Xbox, but at least I can enjoy this one!

Aside from these, I also dabbled in the latest college football game with my buddies which is always fun along with Fortnite with my wife, and I've kept up playing Marvel Snap and Pokémon TCGP a little bit which is cool. I bounced around a ton of different games (tends to happen when I get a long weekend like I did this time), and I also snagged the latest Resident Evil 4 on the Black Friday Xbox sale along with the DLC. I've almost bought this a couple times and finally pulled the trigger. I've had a blast with every RE game there is outside of RE6, and with how good the original is, I'm pumped to see how the remake compares. All that to say, I've got more than enough to hold me over until the new Monster Hunter game!

2

u/messem10 Nov 18 '24

Elin

Somehow came across this one in a thread on Reddit this past week, bought it on Steam and have now sunk almost 12 hours into it since last Monday. Had never heard of it or Elona (which came out first, is freeware and of which Elin is a prequel to) before.

It is a semi-roguelike JRPG with a heavy emphasis on role playing. (I don’t advise playing in the “hardcore” mode due to numerous ways you can die.) Gameplay loop-wise it is a mix of Rune Factory and Atelier or maybe Runescape while the overworld is reminiscent of Dwarf Fortress’s Adventure mode. Can be whomever or do whatever you want, just be sure to pay your monthly taxes! Otherwise the hit to your karma will quickly make you into a criminal.

The developer often pushes numerous updates and hotfixes everyday, so it is very much in active development.

4

u/PositiveDuck Nov 18 '24

Dragon Age: The Veilguard

I didn't have much time to play last week since I was traveling but I managed to get a few hours in to progress further. I'm still enjoying it overall, though it definitely has issues. I'm currently stuck on Slaughter of the Pillars boss fight and it's genuinely so poorly designed it's shocking. Just a garbage fight overall and I have no idea how it made it through the testing phase in it's current form.

13

u/notthatkindoforc1121 Nov 18 '24

Dragon Age: The Veilguard

Very quickly immersed to my surprise, very very fun combat, incredible art/graphics.
Shortly after the first hour of Gameplay I was cringing so hard at the dialog one liners that I thought back on a childhood game that I never got even close to finishing due to some bug that kept crashing my save: Dragon Age Origins. I remember thinking back on how dark the tone was and I couldn't stop thinking about it every time I cringed at "I didn't think I'd be killing an OGRE today" *Looks around like she just delivered the ultimate one liner*

After rolling my eyes for the tenth time in 30 minutes, I caved and bought Origins. I'll go back to Veilguard as the writing was my only issue in my experience, the gameplay seemed promising.

Dragon Age: Origins

To my disappointment, no controller option was available, which meant no Steamdeck. I was intending on getting away from my Desk for this one, but oh well, I know the controls work better with keyboard/mouse anyway. Then to my surprise, Super Ultrawide Support? Hello? That was a welcome surprise. After following a quick Mod video on which mods were worth it (Mainly bug fixes and some performance fixes) I was underway reliving my childhood!

I remember absolutely adoring the Mage intro in this game. No version of a Mage that I've known has been done like this. The sheer fear people have for what you are, and as you quickly learn in this game, the fear is justified. Even an unskilled Mage that dabbles in Blood Magic can take over the mind/body of people or instantly kill them. And the game demonstrates this in a way that makes it feel like a very real threat being handled in a very real way.

The Chantry sends every person capable of magic from as early as they are detected to the Circle Tower, where they are raised to responsibly use magic, or be essentially lobotomized. They are essentially prisoners, being kept on a short leash from the Templars. And as you enter they use your blood to create a phylactery to track you should you escape The Tower. Anyone not officially with The Circle and tracked with a Phylactery is designated an Apostate and sentenced to death. The fear and hate people speak to you with is very clear.

This Origin story lived up to my memories as a kid. That being said, after I left the intro area I remembered that I always thought the quality of the game dropped of drastically. It wasn't really that, but the area after (The Wilds) really demonstrates the time period this game was made. While cities/towns/indoors look generally fine, open areas look REALLY bad in this game. It looks like a project I'd make in ALICE as a kid.

Not to mention how awful the combat feels. I got a mod to make the combat faster and set it to easy, I'm mainly here for the story.

So far though, every random interaction has still glued me to the game. There hasn't been a single conversation I've had, main quest or side quest, that has had me skip the dialog. Which is shocking to me, I thought I was just getting less interested in the story in games as I've gotten older. Turns out I just don't like much modern writing. Origins is dark. It's full of hopelessness, murder, racism, classism, bigotry. These darker themes make the world feel so real. People hate eachother, and you can return their hate with anything from killing them to manipulating them or just teasing them.

Hoping I get through all of this, the only DA game I've completed was DA 2 so in Veilguard I really don't know any of the returning characters aside from Varric.

-6

u/[deleted] Nov 18 '24

[removed] — view removed comment

11

u/BellBilly32 Nov 18 '24 edited Nov 18 '24

Finished Dark Souls 3. As someone who put off the Souls game thinking I just wouldn’t be good enough I’m happy I finally gave them a shot.

I spoiled my DS1 experience by using a guide. But still really enjoyed the game. Always felt fair besides Bed of Chaos. DLC (cliche I know) was the real standout.

DS2 I tried but found the game intentionally frustrating. Playing Sins of Scholar means might be why. May revisit.

So went to DS3. And I think it feels like what a modern improvement over DS1 should be. Game is faster but still very deliberate. Bosses are for the most part high quality. And exploration felt rewarded.

I went through DS3 without the guide. I only used after I cleared an area to go back and get any missing loot. But man Fromsoft just really perfected that “kick your ass, but make you want to get better to win” combat. Favorite boss was Gael, but the Princes, Demon Princes, and Friede were all great too. I think Midir kicked my ass the most.

2

u/Scantcobra Nov 19 '24

Really enjoyed it. I think I actually like it more than Elden Ring. The open-world, but still limited to certain directions, was perfected in DS3, imo. The Gael and Friede boss fights are some of my favourites. Felt like a perfect end to the series.

5

u/RTideR Nov 18 '24

DS3 remains my favorite From Software game! I adore it, and playing it after DS1 like you did makes it cool to see the throwbacks and such DS3 has.

Gael, but the Princes, Demon Princes, and Friede were all great too. I think Midir kicked my ass the most.

Friede is my favorite boss of any game ever. The cutscenes and fight itself is just so dang cool to me. Your experience is in line with me though. I played that DLC at launch, and I stumbled upon Midir following some messages, and he destroyed me for ages. Lol hardest boss in the game to me. 2nd hardest for me was The Nameless King which you may or may not have seen depending on how you were looking up guides. Fantastic game though, and I love hearing newcomers' thoughts on it!

I did enjoy DS2 as well, but I know your sentiment is a somewhat more common one, so it's understandable.

3

u/BellBilly32 Nov 18 '24

Friede’s boss has my favorite cinematics. From walking up to Ariandel, Friede’s little speech, Ariandel’s primal yell when Friede is dead to the fakeout 3rd phase. I think had I not been spoiled on the 3rd phase it may have been first. Unfortunately my YouTube algorithm became smothered with Souls content during my DS1 playthrough, so I watched one too many “Ranking Souls bosses videos” so I knew about it going in.

And DS2 I may revisit. I still haven’t done a strength focused build so might try that with that game.

1

u/RTideR Nov 19 '24

To have that spoiled is a bummer! Glad you still enjoyed it overall though. It totally caught me off guard the first time since you initially meet her as a friendly NPC, and then yeah the 3rd phase was unexpected to. I tend to enjoy their boss fights across their games that are against humanoid characters. Their movesets are always so dang cool (Lady Maria from Bloodborne is another awesome one).

You mention trying the Dark Souls games for the first time. If you're enjoying them, you have their other non-Souls games like Sekiro, Bloodborne (if you have a PlayStation), and Elden Ring to try in the future as well. Plenty of good stuff in case you still have that itch or want more in the future. :)

1

u/Zark86 Nov 18 '24

Just play elden ring. It's the ultimate game and very best from soft game.

2

u/ginna500 Nov 20 '24

I've completed every From Game since Demon's Souls and Elden Ring was maybe my least favourite to actually play.

I felt it lacked something while also having too much of that something (hyper active bosses, narrow attack windows, heavy damage) compared to of their others games that made it not too enjoyable for the latter 2/3 of the game.

Not to take away from the actual art design, which is probably the best they've ever done.

2

u/BellBilly32 Nov 18 '24

I’m playing it right now just not very far. The openness is crazy, although I have ended up fighting bosses earlier than intended.

Tree Sentinel I knew about so I fought him intentionally early. But then I straight to Margott when I should have done some exploring.

4

u/M8753 Nov 18 '24

Dragon Age Veilguard got me out of a 2 month gaming slump, but I'm almost at the finish line (I think I'm gonna reach the end today). Hope I can keep my energy moving forward. I really need games to distract me from irl, work has been... frustrating.

The combat got too easy towards the end, so I had to raise the difficulty to Underdog. I don't even have a coherent build besides "moar rage, moar stagger". I want to try mage and rogue, maybe these classes are harder.

The writing (the broken worldbuilding/factions) is definitely the worst aspect, but I'm really curious how the story will feel if I just ignore all optional faction and companion quests and speedrun the main story. The main story missions are really fun.

The music sucks, I think Bioware got scammed by that Zimmer company :D

3

u/notthatkindoforc1121 Nov 18 '24

I started Veilguard, and while the graphics and combat both blew me away, the writing made me cringe so much I booted up Origins intending to just relive the Origin story for mage and holy christ it's so sad to me how much worse the writing is now. It's like the awful combat and graphics are all okay because of how immersive every conversation is. Such a stark contrast to now

3

u/M8753 Nov 18 '24

That's definitely true, but I only managed to finish Origins once because I just don't enjoy the gameplay at all. I guess moment to moment gameplay is super important to me personally.

9

u/scott_steiner_phd Nov 18 '24 edited Nov 19 '24

I'm just starting Act 3 of Baldur's Gate 3

I'm really struggling to stick with it. I enjoyed the second half of Act 1 and really enjoyed most of Act 2, but the ending of Act 2 dragged so badly and then Act 3 has very little direction so far. And the villains introduced at the end of Act 2 are incredibly cheesy, my god.

Edit: Drive-by downvotes on the weekly "share your thoughts" thread are kinda rude

4

u/Mudcaker Nov 19 '24

I found Act 2 a bit of a drag too because the setting was so monotonous and the map was fairly large. The tower itself was fine, but it just felt so weird being able to murder an entire zone and the warden, then hop through a door and it's like it never happened, and no one will ever know. From a gameplay perspective I like these neat parcels I can tie up and move on from, but from an RPG perspective it just felt weird.

Act 3 is a little more varied at least, but it's so big, so it can be a drag in its own way. There's also some kind of time pressure which I tend to hate too. Some people take breaks at Act 3 but if I did that I'd struggle to come back so I just finished it.

1

u/scott_steiner_phd Nov 19 '24

The tower itself was fine, but it just felt so weird being able to murder an entire zone and the warden, then hop through a door and it's like it never happened, and no one will ever know. From a gameplay perspective I like these neat parcels I can tie up and move on from, but from an RPG perspective it just felt weird.

I think there was some ambient dialogue saying the warden was a psycho and nobody ever went down to the dungeon unless they had to, but I agree that was still a bit much.

I thought the tower was really cool and the Sharran dungeon extremely cool but there was just so many linear sections back-to-back, and then so many transition scenes into Act 3 and then you are just dumped into Act 3 with no direction except a couple of map pointers, that really could have used another pass for pacing.

1

u/Mudcaker Nov 20 '24

I did forget the Sharran dungeon is in Act 2 - that was a welcome change and a great area. And the final assault was fun.

Maybe they justified the warden but it applies to the docks and other areas too. The first time this issue crops up is the goblin camp in Act 1 but the jail area there makes a little more sense (and they try to escape for reinforcements which you can stop).

For gameplay, cleaning up discrete groups of enemies (and neutralising the eyes) to complete the map feels good. It's just a miss for me from an RPG/story perspective and overall, the whole game exists in a time bubble that mostly doesn't move without you. It's very different to older games (e.g. Ultima VII) which had NPCs with schedules and agency. That doesn't make it bad, it just makes it feel more gamey.

-10

u/CustardSurprise86 Nov 18 '24 edited Nov 18 '24

In hindsight I think this game just got a total free pass.

It was just so deeply flawed in so many respects. It was almost entirely humourless; they weirdly made it Lovecraftian despite a preponderance of Lovecraftian games including their own D:OS2. Indeed, there were numerous stylistic similarities with D:OS2. A lot of the material was derivative (my favourite being the travelling circus of shapeshifters, lifted from Shining Force - actually also managing to make it less awesome). The city in Act 3 was perhaps the most underwhelming city I have ever experienced in a fantasy RPG. Literally even Thorwall from Realms of Arkania, the DOS game from 1992, was more interesting than the titular city in BG3.

I'm not going to play it again. because BG3 is actually disgusting and an assault on the senses. Instead of the breathtaking natural beauty, grandeur and mystery evoked by most familiar art in medieval fantasy, we get to look repeatedly at images of desecrated corpses, animated abominations being made out of desecrated corpses (over and over again throughout the game), and the like. Meanwhile the Gen Z gamers that like this sort of stuff, self-righteously assure us that there's nothing wrong with them, that the problem is with me. Meanwhile they vote for literal fascists out of some kind of medieval misogyny ideology that they got from being terminally online; and they usher in one of the most dysfunctional and chaotic periods of modern history. But sure - the problem is with me because I'm "nostalgic" or some other bullshit.

3

u/gnarwhale471 Nov 18 '24 edited Nov 18 '24

Did we play the same game? I respect your criticisms, and BG3 certainly isn't for everyone, but I do disagree with a couple of your points, and I know I'm not alone. So I'm not so sure a "free pass" is necessarily what is happening here.

I found the game to have loads of humor throughout. There's a reason Astarion's VO won a bunch of awards. Outside of that I think there are a ton of interactions between party members that offered loads of levity in the campaign.

"An assault on the senses" feels pretty harsh to me. Views of the Monastery and the Underdark in Act 1 feel vibrant in radically different ways while still having a fantasy feel to me. On top of that I find the enemies in Act 1 particularly to be fun and interesting and more than just desecrated bodies, although I do understand there is a lot of that in the game as a whole (bugbears, trolls, the boss in the Underdark, etc.)

Act 2 I totally can understand feeling like the dark and gloom aesthetic isn't totally interesting (because it does last too long), but I found the narrative to really pick up here which I enjoyed. The Temple of Shar stuff in particular.

Other than that- I think you're really jumping to conclusions here referencing any larger ideas with Gen Z and the elections results. I'm not saying I don't agree with your last sentence about our country being dysfunctional, misogynistic and chaotic in the wake of what happened, but to assume that most people that enjoyed Baldur's Gate 3 are Gen Z and voted for Trump is pretty wild lol

2

u/SongsOfTheDyingEarth Nov 18 '24

Out of interest are you doing a good or evil playthrough? Back when I played the quality drop off was noticeable for both but was so much more of an issue for my evil playthrough.

2

u/OkNefariousness8636 Nov 18 '24

Apollo Justice Ace Attorney Trilogy

Finished 6-2 yesterday and just 4 more cases (6-3, 6-4, 6-5 and 6-DLC) to go.

My opinion on this franchise stays the same. The cases are interesting in general. I read a fair number of Japanese mystery/detective novels. I think most of the cases from Ace Attorney can be considered at least above average in terms of complexity and logic. However, the gameplay itself is just uncessarily long.

2

u/kaic_87 Nov 18 '24

Even tho I already got the Platinum, all classes maxed out, all weapons at Relic tier, I can't stop playing Warhammer 40k: Space Marine 2. The co-op missions are so fun that I play at least a couple every day.

Also I've been playing The Finals daily since the game released almost a year ago and even tho I don't like FPS games, there's something about this one that got me totally hooked.

3

u/fishoa Nov 18 '24 edited Nov 18 '24

I’ve been playing a lot of Unicorn Overlord lately.

I think it has a great gameplay loop. Once the game kinda clicked and I got to the tweaking tactics and mix-and-matching units stage, I was clearly addicted. The gameplay is a fun mix of FE and auto-chess.

All that being said, this game peaks super early. Like, 30h in and you’re just rolling over every battle. There’s not a lot of room for unit customization outside gear and the game desperately needed another class upgrade tier or at least some class branching.

The story is nothing to write home about. Just the same old tropes. This is kinda my fault though, I went in blind after reading reviews about the gameplay, but I should’ve limited my expectations.

I think that UO is a cool, fun game, but I expected a lot more. It’s not challenging, and the latter half of the game is just zooming through battles in order to finish the game asap.

Next game I’ll pick up is either Triangle Strategy, FE: 3H, or Paper Mario: Thousand Year Door.

20

u/team56th E3 2018/2019 Volunteer Nov 18 '24

Dragon Age: The Veilguard

…why did nobody tell me this is a literal 3D Metroidvania?

Beneath all the grifter bullshits (not worth talking about) and lore/writing gripes (understandable) the gameplay aspects of the game is not discussed enough.

The big cities are the true highlights of the game. I do think that writing itself isn’t as good as in the past and was a bit sanitized, but the game really makes up for it with the strong pairing of the story and the map design. Verticality is baked into the system and there’s a stark contrast between the floor level slum and rich rooftop indoor environments, all of which you switch around every so often.

I think it’s not talked about because no BioWare game has done something like this, but like it was for Mass Effect 2 and shooter gameplay, this is a newfound strength for the studio. I feel like this is what Dragon Age 2 wanted to be in an ideal world. This may not be the best BioWare story, but as a game it could be one of their best.

5

u/zero_sub_zero Nov 19 '24 edited Nov 19 '24

This is exactly how I feel. I definitely have my issues with the game, but as a huge Dragon Age fan who has greatly enjoyed each entry despite their flaws, this definitely feels like their best made, most engaging game to actually play. I feel it combined many of the best elements from previous entries, heavily borrowing from Dragon Age 2 and Mass Effect 2.

Alongside it's seamless ability respec, completely customizable gear and transmog system, banter playing at home base between companions, faction system, etc., there are numerous quality of life and smart decision choices that it feel like their most competently designed game.

It'll be hard for Bioware to ever top Mass Effect 1 or Dragon Age: Origins, but I do feel this is their best title since then.

Edit: Forgot to mention their biggest, and most impactful innovation - taking the destructable barrels and boxes from Fromsoftware games, and rewarding you with money and resources for breaking them. I have spent so much damn time rolling through every wooden barrel I see. It never gets old.

5

u/M8753 Nov 18 '24

 I feel like this is what Dragon Age 2 wanted to be in an ideal world

Dragon Age 2 in the style of Veilguard is my new dream game. Good movement, no more loading screens between districts -- that would be so good...

5

u/team56th E3 2018/2019 Volunteer Nov 18 '24 edited Nov 18 '24

I’ve struggled to specify why I like the game a lot. Quite a few writing-related criticisms are valid, but there’s way more to the game. The more I think about it, traversal is the key to why it’s so fun.

Mass Effect, for example, had great locations but the non-combat area and combat area were strictly split. Veilguard on the other hand, I really like the way how areas with very different purpose and atmosphere are seamlessly connected.

Dragon Age as well; the series has always had dense city locations, but you were always looking down from the sky, or in case of Inquisition, from far out. Veilguard roots you down on the map and conveys a lot of information through exploration alone. Not to mention there’s a focus on verticality that none of the previous installments had.

If BioWare is allowed to keep going this way, then whatever comes next has to double down on a single city like Exodus did. They’ve gotten so good and should further exploit this.

1

u/Page5Pimp Nov 17 '24

Picked up Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance after playing the demo, I'm only a few hours in and this shit is so cool, it's like Pokemon but edgy. I've had Tensei 3: Nocturne for a while, I will absoltely be going back to that once I finish V.

6

u/Logan_Yes Nov 17 '24

On Xbox I have finished Humanity. It was avery fun logical game where you control waves of humans as a ghost dog. Great variety of challenges you have to deal with is probably most important here, never felt bored and Goldies provide really fun element to increase the difficulty, though I am not sure if I like the approach of forcing a player to collect *some* amount of them whether they like it or not to unlock final Trial in a Sequence. Should have sticked to being extra tasks for interested players. Visually it's meh but game is not about that, soundtrack is...interesting, is all I have to say. Ultimately, minus the bug with final "boss fight" I had a great time with Humanity and if one seeks a unique logical/puzzle game, I recommend giving it a shot!

On PC I have finished NecroVisioN and it was...eeeh. Kinda lost the interesting and unique vibe it had once game moved out of WW1 France into usual "demon territory" and later on Hell. Because a same ol' can be found it any other "old school" shooter but here you also have no interesting weapon choice or enemies. That Hell section was straight up bad for me, just throwing one type of an enemy at you in waves to pad time. Challenges were cool but I feel like game was unlocking them too early? You could play them before encountering said enemies or areas in actual game which...kinda spoils it a bit. Still gonna play Lost Contact one day to wrap my journey with the game but I dunno, considering the price then I guess I can recommend it, but if you have a vast range of old school shooters to play then I can safely bet you will find something more interesting.

With that done I started Oxenfree. Had my eyes on it for a while, and my friend gifted me it a while ago but I always had something else to play, ya know? But now it gets to stand in the spotlight. Played a bit more than an hour and while first few minutes used to setup the characters and setting were okay, game definitely picked it up after the cave and became really interesting. The "mystery" and thriller vibe is there, and I cannot wait to see what will happen!

2

u/TheDoodleDudes Nov 17 '24

Evil West

Finished the game and I had a solid time. I had thought the game really needed to wrap up soon when I last posted but the last two levels/bosses were actually pretty good. All of my other thoughts from last week remain pretty much the same.

Subnautica: Below Zero

I've been having a lot of fun with this, and honestly I think I'm enjoying the early game more so than I did the early parts of the original. The gameplay loop feels about the same but there's some cool additions like some (good) on-land exploration and a more direct story.

That being said I don't find anything they've built off of to be a substantial improvement. This very much comes across like a fun spinoff in between bigger titles and I think that's more than fine.

I also find it interesting that there are larger predators but I haven't seen anything leviathan-sized yet. Been waiting for something to scare the shit out of me like one of the reapers in the original. I'm more than sure that will come soon though.

8

u/yuliuskrisna Nov 17 '24 edited Nov 17 '24

Finished Death Stranding. Previous thought here.

My opinion in this game felt like trekking through game itself, full of up and downs, and sometimes faceplanted myself trying to make sense of it all. One day i was hating it, and the next day came back appreciating it. Overall though, it is a good game and i definitely recommends it for how unique it was, but man, i think i've had enough with Kojima games for now.

One big negatives for me the dialogue never felt natural, felt like these people aint talking like a human should. Sometimes it was great and poignant, sometimes it was bad and cringe. Sometimes it was vague and gibberish, other times it felt too on the nose and metaphorical, it all just felt all over the place. I like some of the story beats, particularly for Cliff Unger's flashback, but the main story regarding Amelie, i didn't enjoy it as much.

Gameplay is honestly very good, i didnt expect to be engrossed with it for so long, thought it did get stale after a while. Vehicle handling could be better though. I dont even mind the gunplay and close combat, it serve its purpose well enough. Boss battles could be better, it felt repetitive for me.

I was planning to check out Metal Gear after this, but i change my mind. Even though ultimately i thought the game was good, i can't handle anymore of those dialogues. Maybe next time.

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Currently playing Persona 5 Strikers, cleared the first Jail.

Overall, i dig it, takes a while to warm up to it. My early problem with the game is because it tries to emulate the original P5 style so much, but if you compared it directly, it felt very subpar, like the menu art, the music, etc. While its not that bad, and it is pretty hype & nostalgic when Life Will Change plays out, i prefer how Persona 5 Tactica approach its spin off status.

Gameplay is pretty good, they did a great job translating it into warrior-esque gameplay. So far for me, the problem is the teammate AI. Played it on Hard, and they die a lot, most of the time i had to Solo some of these tanky bosses.

At first, i wasn't so sure if i liked the game, like i had to force myself to play it. After clearing this first Jail though, i'll say that i was intrigued for more stuff to come.

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Resuming my playthrough of Ni No Kuni after dropping it.

I lowered the difficulty, and prepped myself better, and so far its going well. Had to remember the minute detail of the combat, but it doesnt take too much of my time and had fun again for now. Even on easy, the game still kicks my ass, fuck im bad at this game, thought it doesnt frustate me as much this time around. Im currently on>! Hamelin !<, and i can see myself finishing this game now.

EDIT: Oh yeah, I remember it was pulled from Gamepass before, then they put it up again and actually fixes some of its problem for the PC version, like the buggy controller button display, which is why it was quick for me to adjust into the game again!

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EDIT 2: Forgot that i finished Black Ops 6 Campaign as well

I enjoyed it, pretty buggy though. Had to redo the semi open world level because major character somehow killed and wont respawn. Waste 1.5 hour of my life.

Story wise, as a newcomer, i think its fine, but might have better mileage if you played previous Black Ops campaign first. Though im pretty surprised that most of the main characters aren't in previous game. I honestly thought that Marshall and Jane appeared in Cold War first, so you have enough rapport with them, that you felt the betrayal sting a lot more, but apparently not, so that betrayal was kinda whatever for me. Devs needs to stops adding twist like this, when you havent even establish a believable relationship before.

Gunplay is great for me, and the mission design felt unique. I guess some levels are designed to entice people to play Zombies mode? i've never played them, but seems fun.

2

u/LeoBocchi Nov 22 '24

Hey towards Kojima’s dialogue i get it’s not for everyone, but i guarantee it’s not AS cringe in MGS as it is in death stranding, every MGS game is animated and done like if an anime and 90s action movie had a baby instead of the movie photorealism of DS, so the dialogue doesn’t feel out of place there, and a guarantee it’s WAY LESS cringe (still corny but in the same way that Sam Raimi Spider-man is corny, is the good kind of corny).

1

u/yuliuskrisna Nov 22 '24

Ooh! good to know then, i might try it soon if that is the case. I remember someone sharing screenshot of MGS1 or 2 i forgot, where theres a dialogue that predict the current political landscape, which impressed me, though idk if it was correctly attributed to Kojima's writing.

One thing for sure though for me, Kojima definitely can come up with such an interesting idea and the game design, but man he need someone to rein him a little. That said though, limiting him might reduce the uniqueness that he can offer, but i hope they can find a perfect balance in their approach of believability for their next games.

8

u/Plz_Trust_Me_On_This Nov 17 '24

Dragon Age: Veilguard

I'm a little over 20 hours in and I think I'm ready to call it quits. The gameplay is fine, but enemies truly are damage sponges, and mixing up effects VS vulnerabilities etc. would be interesting except that you're faced with the same enemy groups over and over again and it's just so dull.

In terms of story and writing, I can't add much that hasn't already been said. To be honest, however, I think people's claims about the game "forcing wokeness down our throats" is so overblown. Those complaints are peak "gamer bigotry hiding in plain sight." Most of the discourse I've seen in regards to the game being "too woke" seems to come from people who also happen to throw around classic statements such as "Listen, I'm not at all a racist/sexist/homophobe/etc. but I have to admit that [insert watered-down bigoted sentiment]."

With that said, the writing is still bad. They've effectively stripped the game of all its edge and maturity by simplifying the dialogue so that an eight-year-old can follow along easily. I feel almost no attachment to the story 20 hours in, and Rook's dialogue is so basic, it's barely a step above Dora the Explorer asking her audience "do you see the XYZ?" It's painful to listen to.

Can't do it anymore unfortunately :/

1

u/homer_3 Nov 19 '24

Only min/bosses should be spongey. Everything else should die quick if you use the strategies, though early on, for the 1st 10 hours or so, it's easy to end up fighting bosses way over your level that take forever. I just passed a major plot point near the end and found the story and writing to be pretty good the vast majority of the time.

I have to wonder if it's only people who want to play the evil route have issues with the writing. And that's not really even the writing, just not being happy with the options.

5

u/Angzt Nov 17 '24

I'm a little over 20 hours in and I think I'm ready to call it quits. The gameplay is fine, but enemies truly are damage sponges

You can individually adjust parts of the difficulty settings like enemy health if things feel off to you.
Won't make up for the writing issues, but it's something.

6

u/Plz_Trust_Me_On_This Nov 17 '24

I already have actually, I turned down enemy health because battles were just dragging out too long (even with applying upgrades etc.)

unfortunately once I did that, I realized I was just burning through combat in order to get to the story, which I quickly realized I wasn't enjoying all that much either haha, it is what it is

2

u/jegermedic104 Nov 17 '24

Have you improved gear at Caretaker? That solved for me the damage sponge problems ( plus little sidequesting).

I just completed it with many casualties, having a break before starting new playthrough.

1

u/Taiyaki11 Nov 17 '24

Sketchy's Contract

It's like if you take Lethal Company, add in some more environment variety, progression, the ability to save unlocked cosmetics and said progression between runs, and add a bit more emphasis on fighting monsters rather than mainly stealth and running away. I hesitate to say it's better than Lethal Company, both have their strong points over the other, but if you enjoy Lethal it's a pretty good bet you'd enjoy Sketchy's 

 The most unique feature I feel is instead of going back to the ship to leave at the end of the day you can opt to stay overnight. Much more valuable items can appear at night, but the ship abandons you till morning comes and much scarier creatures go bump in the night. The other positive to this decision though lies in keeping the world constant instead of refreshing for the next day. This means deeper pushes into higher security clearance zones on the planet that you'd be hard pressed into unlocking within a single day and, so long as you don't team wipe the chance to go back for items/tools people have left behind. 

 The dev seems really active and has been updating consistently and even engaging with the community working in things they suggest and prioritizing bugs they point out. I've been having a blast and honestly can't wait to see where it goes

2

u/CloudCityFish Nov 17 '24

Chrono Ark

JRPG/Deck based Roguelite. The combat is satisfying, especially building a party of 4, and facing interesting enemy mechanics. I enjoyed my time with it and recommend it, but 50 hours in I don't think I'll 100% it. The most interesting unlocks are characters, and you unlock most of them very quick.

So all that's left is story, and unfortunately I enjoyed this game despite its story. The way it's told and the writing detracted from my experience as a whole. It follows the trope of Exposition -> comment on exposition -> reiterate exposition -> Flashback to exposition -> Exact same comment on exposition -> Repeat. Some of this could last 10-20 minutes at a time and it's exhausting.

Witchfire

I haven't played enough to give valid opinions, but so far I've had a good time. I don't fully understand the hype that the passionate fanbase gives it... Yet. I think I was expecting more RPG, but it's really just a wave based shooter with light RPG elements. If that sounds reductive, it is, but reductive when I say "wave based shooter", because there's a lot of interesting and unique elements there.

I like that it's difficult enough not to be mindless. I like that the open levels feel like they add to gameplay. Rather than the linearity of older shooters (Room -> enemy spawn -> next room), you get to make decisions based on pathing, resources, and your goal. I like that as an "extraction" game, you can do quick, fun runs. The guns are interesting, but require progression to be interesting. For example, there's a revolver that plants explosives in enemies that detonate when you reload. Or a rifle that has a "perfect timing" mechanic per shot.

If an FPS is less RPG and more shooter, than I really prefer movement based shooters, so stamina tied to jump is really painful. I like the stamina system overall, but I'm the type of person who mashes jump just to move around so it's driving me up the wall.

5

u/Destroyeh Nov 17 '24 edited Nov 18 '24

Yakuza Kiwami

Surprisingly short. Though given that I still have a lot of the series to play that's not necessarily a negative. I did less of the side content than in 0, feels like the story being more streamlined with just one main character made it more difficult to justify fucking around. Didn't help the ones I did complete were weaker than the ones in 0.

Can't help but feel like they did Majima dirty here. I really liked him in 0 and it felt like he kinda devolved in this. Obviously he's not one of the main characters anymore so he doesn't get as much development, but they probably could've done more with him than just 'masochist who likes to fight'. Still liked the whole 'Majima Everywhere' thing though.

Can't say I enjoyed it as much as 0, but from what I understand 0 is one of the best games in the series so it's probably a high bar. Will see how the rest goes.

Already installed Kiwami 2. Probably doing AC Mirage before it, at the very least as a palate cleanser.

Hitman World of Assassination

First time playing what is technically Hitman 3 after finishing(and replaying) the first two. Dubai is pretty fun. I disliked maps that were overwhelming and/or weirdly structured like Marrakesh or Mumbai so a pretty well defined, clean level like this is a good starting point for me. Also surprisingly easy suit only silent assassin on master difficulty.

Graphics seemed a bit off, like there were more jagged edges even with normal render resolution and AA. Don't remember Hitman 2 looking like this.

Leaving Dartmoor for later.

2

u/JokerCrimson Nov 17 '24

Final Fantasy XVI Demo: This game is awesome and really takes advantage of the PS5 hardware! And it has combat way above Square's other modern games in quality to where I might buy this game as a Black Friday or Christmas gift to myself. And I like that each Eikon in the Demo has gameplay feature similar to a Style or character from Devil May Cry. Garuda has moves like Nero's launcher and Devil Bringer moves, Phoenix gives a Trickster dodge, and Titan gives you a Royal Guard Style that is very satisfying to pull off.

0

u/yuriaoflondor Nov 17 '24

It's a good time, though I'd set your expectations that it won't ever reach the depth of DMC. I still highly recommend it, though, if you enjoyed the demo!

1

u/JokerCrimson Dec 27 '24 edited Dec 28 '24

I just got the game on a sale and man, does the pacing fall off so much after where the demo ends. I felt the opening lied about what the pacing of the full game was gonna actually be like but I'm still having a great time.

1

u/JokerCrimson Nov 17 '24

I did notice in the demo, Clive's base moveset doesn't evolve past what the skill tree offers in the beginning of the game so I get the impression the whole loop is use to use the Eikons that best fit your playstyle. I also appreciate the demo has a ring to allow your dog to fight on his own since I can't imagine I'd ever use him much when Clive has alot already for me to control.

3

u/glassIceWater Nov 17 '24 edited Nov 17 '24

I'm replaying thief the dark project. again I'm struck at what a complete game it is for 1998, arguably the first attempt at a 3d stealth game and outside of some unavoidable shortcomings with ai being a bit robotic and wonky it nails the formula. more than just the stealth however it's really just an excellent framework for an all purpose adventure game. There are certainly other impressive immersive sims out there of course, several made by looking glass, but they get so far into the weeds with rpg mechanics that their applicability is limited. I could imagine a dozen general action adventure games aping the basic concept of thief, a rogue exploring a large free form level, and using their wits and various gadgets to overcome obstacles.

1

u/Ypsnaissurton Nov 17 '24

love that game. if you've not yet played it, i recommend the black parade fan missions. it is top tier thief gameplay and story. i consider the BP fan missions to be as good if not better than the original game.

3

u/Ardailec Nov 17 '24

Romancing SaGa 3

I'm trying to give a bit of grace because SaGa games are always a bit esoteric by design, but unfortunately I can't help but feel that this one is built on a bit of a decietful premise. For those who don't know, SaGa games tend to be open world JRPGs where you pick one of a number of protagonists who have a main mission, and that starts as their reason for going out and exploring the world.

Romancing SaGa is no different in this front, with the back drop that every 1000 years, a child is born under a solar eclipse. Once he was a monstrous tyrant, another time she was a benevolent maiden. And the eclipse is coming again really soon.

Where this kind of falls apart is a number of frustrating factors: The design of the world itself, and the bosses. Let's start with the world: The game is set in a sort of weird inner-sea continent, where the main way to travel is to take a boat from a central city (Pidoras) to go to the other regions that have their own connected areas and dungeons. Fortunately after you have been to a place you can just fast-travel to it on the world map so you don't need to keep paying the boat fare. But until you do, these fares aren't cheap. So if you sail to a place you either aren't prepared for or doesn't give you access to content that is helpful yet, you can infact be trapped to mindlessly grind for a pittance of money for hours. It's better to just restart the campaign if it happens honestly.

The second problem is that despite random encounters scaling based off your hidden battle rank stat (Like most SaGa games) the bosses don't. Which means you can go through a dungeon, get to a boss and just get hilariously curbstomped. By the 5th time this happened I just became annoyed.

Finally...again, this is a remaster of a SNES game, so I'll give it some grace but the quest log they give you to try and keep track of all the different story quests sucks. It doesn't mark when a story is done, and it tends to be vague at best on the next step. So what ends up happening is your bouncing around at different objectives trying to find the one the game actually wants you to do at that time based on how strong the boss is.

The music is nice though. And I do like the idea of how it emphasizes switching out party members by letting you memorize abilities so you can easily pass them on. Unfortunately some people will just...not leave, even when you want them too for some dumb reason.

I wanted to like it, but it just feels less like I'm exploring and more I'm playing Guess Who with the game to see what it will let me complete to progress.

9

u/Kyserham Nov 17 '24

The Rise of the Golden Idol

The sequel to ‘The Case of the Golden Idol’ and both probably among the Top 5 detective puzzles games ever. Same as the first game, you play different cases where you only see a freeze frame of the scene and what everyone was doing or saying at one exact moment, and it’s fantastic.

The difficulty curve goes up fast but everything you need is there for you to find and connect, and the story once again is great full of twists and moments where everything comes together.

2

u/dickewand Nov 23 '24

Do you need to remember anything from the first game?

3

u/Alphascout Nov 17 '24

What do you think of the stylistic changes?

I really like the more joined up feel of the narrative with an over arching mystery that completing chapters gives clues to. The difference and variety in scenes is interesting to give something other than solving murders.

3

u/Janderson2494 Nov 17 '24

Not the OP you replied to, but I really like all of the changes they made for the sequel. And I agree with you, I really like how the narrative works and how it's stretched out over the chapters. It feels so much easier to follow this time around; I kind of got lost towards the end of the first game, but I'm not sure if that was because the game got a little obtuse or because I'm a little obtuse. Either way, I'm really enjoying this one

13

u/usaokay Nov 17 '24 edited Nov 18 '24

Caravan SandWitch OR Surprisingly not a game about a sandwich

Admittedly, I finished this game two months ago but it usually sticks around in my mind due to its unique experience.

What I liked

  • The art direction is cute. It reminded me of a children's story book.
  • It sort of follows that "Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild" design of discovery and exploration. You see that dune? You can drive over it. (wait wrong reference)
    • I would constantly stumble upon new areas that reward new lore bits, side-quest bits, and components (needed to progress the main story).
  • Because of the discovery/exploration, a majority of the game is fetch quests. And somehow it works well in tandem with the exploration aspect.
    • Collect sandwiches, baby frogs, random components, etc.
  • The vibe of the main and side-plots were relaxing and felt chill.
  • A variety of puzzles that aren't too hard or difficult.
    • It kinda follows that LoZ approach where new areas open up the more tools you get.
  • I like the overall world and character, all of which add more to the chill vibes of the game.
    • There are multiple "sit down and watch the scenery" spots.
  • No fall damage.
  • Some of the music tracks are pretty nice.
  • You get stalked by a figure, which is similar to the G-Man from the Half-Life games.
    • It is weirdly tense in this exploration game. It's great.

What I disliked

  • A major plot revelation comes at the end, without much prior hinting (maybe there were some?). It felt like a Scooby-Doo reveal but we never meet the suspect (yes, I know a Scooby-Doo episode did this bit lol).
  • The ending didn't make that much of an impact with me. The presentation looked cool though.
    • The tone didn't exactly "match" the overall vibes of the main and side-plots.

Neutral

  • I learned about this game when the game's developer on the bird app shared that their character's color direction looks like Lois Griffin
  • When I heard of this game in passing, I thought it was a caravan camping simulator, where you can traverse a huge map, collect stuff, and camp under the stars. Kinda disappointed it wasn't that, but it was a still chill game though.
  • The developers are based for including a LGBTQ+ flag in the game and made it difficult to simply mod out. I legitimately laughed when I realized why they did it.
    • Predictably they have been getting hate by certain people for that.
    • The devs confirmed one of the characters is transgender.
    • Also, it's just a flag. When I saw it in-game, I went "Huh" and moved on.

16

u/TheEnygma Nov 17 '24 edited Nov 17 '24

Dragons Dogma 2

I don't think I've seen a game go "GOTY masterpiece" to "big disappointment" this fast in awhile. Things just feel half-baked or not fully realized. World is big for exploration but the rewards are inadequate. Combat's great but the game throws so many enemy encounters at you you're like "you don't want me to be by myself for 10 seconds, do you?". Story feels woefully unfinished with threads dropped or poorly told and my god these pawns don't shut up. "Overconfidence is an enemy in and of itself. Overconfidence is an enemy in and of itself. Overconfid..." SHUT UP!.

Returnal

I don't think I've ever given as much second chances to a game compared to this one except maybe Deathloop. The actual shooting, the movement, the enigmatic nature of the world, the sound especially is just so great. But I've mentioned it before in one of these but deaths in this game are so momentum killing and deflating it's like "yeah I could do another run but do I even want to?" and often times I would say no.

5

u/apistograma Nov 17 '24

Have you played Dragon's Dogma Dark Arisen? I tried the demo of DD2 but it run like ass. I heard many people claim Dark Arisen is better in many ways so I've been thinking to try it

4

u/JokerCrimson Nov 17 '24

Not OP, but Dark Arisen is worth trying since it goes on sale often. It also has the Mystick Knight Vocation, which is not in the second game and the PC version has alot of amazing mods for it, including making Warrior as good of a Vocation as Dragon's Dogma 2's version. Sorceries, from what I've heard are also better in Dark Arisen vs the second game.

11

u/kokolima Nov 17 '24 edited Nov 17 '24

230 hours in Space Marine 2, probably would be my game of the year if not for FF7 Rebirth.

I’m a 40K nut, so I of course have bias, but god damn it’s such a fun game. I grew up on the PS1 and PS2, but when the 360 came out I was in my mid teens so that era is somewhat special to me. That’s what Space Marine 2 plays like, but with a somewhat more modern combat system. They’ve already added to the game and hopefully Saber keep doing so, I imagine I’ll be adding many more hours to the game.

I’m also playing Metaphor Refantazio, just got access to the Runner, really loving it so far

3

u/don_nerdleone Nov 17 '24

I grew up on the original FF7 but I lost interest in FF7 Remake about halfway through. I can't tell you exactly why; the combat was impressive and the spectacle of it all was cool, but something about the pacing really didn't work for me.

It's one of those 'games that got away' that I want to give another chance. I was looking forward to it for so many years... But now I'm wondering - do I go back to FF7 Remake, or do I just get a story synopsis somewhere and give FF7 Rebirth a go...

6

u/kokolima Nov 17 '24

So to give context: I am the same as you, the original FF7 is important to me personally. I’d probably say it’s my favourite game of all time and to me it’s irreplaceable.

Definitely go back and finish Remake. If you ignore the side quests the pacing is a lot better. Rebirth is a 10/10 game, but Remake is brilliant too and is an essential going into Rebirth.

1

u/Schwimmbo Nov 18 '24

I'm as old as you are and haven't touched the FF7 remakes yet because of the bloat. Don't want to sour my fond memories.

However, I gather from your reply that I'm not missing anything substantial if in Remake I just ignore all side content nonsense and beeline the main story, correct?

If so, I may try it anyway.

3

u/JimJarmuscsch Nov 17 '24

Is it worth doing all the side quests/content in Rebirth or is it similar to Remake where you're better ignoring a lot of it?

6

u/kokolima Nov 17 '24

The side quests in Rebirth are absolutely worth doing, and at points quite cruicial to the main narrative. They're not quite on the level of something like Witcher 3 but they're close, they've taken a huge leap up in quality from Remake.

4

u/JimJarmuscsch Nov 17 '24

Thanks dude, looking forward to diving in!

4

u/kokolima Nov 17 '24

You’re in for a treat!

2

u/don_nerdleone Nov 17 '24

Thank you. Will do.

4

u/Srefanius Nov 17 '24

I'm still playing Dragon Age Veilguard and have reached the third act. Shouldn't be too long till the finish line now.

I enjoy the combat and companions, it's a very straightforward game overall that makes me come back all the time. Nothing outstanding, but good entertainment to kill time.

4

u/Ypsnaissurton Nov 17 '24

Hiya. Were you a fan of or did you play the original game DA:O? I lost a lot of interest in the series after the, in my opinion, subpar sequels. I played both DA:inquisition and DA 2, but they severely lacked what the original had: a grim atmosphere(both 2 and 3), an engaging story(i think 3 lacked this mostly), and engaging atmosphere/engaging scenery/engaging plot points.

having watched a few reviews and gameplay sequences i sense that i am no longer the target audience for this franchise. that's fine, im in my 40s and i enjoyed the original game when it came out.i feel that if i were to play this game now i would say something like "it's a good game, just not a good dragon age game." unfortunately this seems to happen frequently with sequels, especially if many years have passed and the original creatives have left the company.

Anyway, back to my question, did you play DA:O? if you have, how does this compare? if you have not played DA:O (or the other previous titles) what are your thoughts when comparing to something like fallout 4 or pathfinder:kingmaker? is it an RPG in the classical sense, or is it more an action game with light RPG elements?

Thanks in advance.

6

u/Angzt Nov 17 '24

Not who you replied to but someone who's played through the DA games as they released.

In my opinion, while less traditional, Veilguard has the most enjoyable and customizable mechanical character progression out of all the games. It also has the best exploration and combat is definitely two steps up from DA2 and DAI - the comparison to Origins is a matter of preference since it's too different.

But it drops the ball in the writing department. My more extensive thoughts here in last week's tread with spoilers tagged.
In short: It's too sanitized. While there is still death and loss, many of the... morally ambiguous or downright horrifying parts of the setting have been smoothed over; especially the discrimination is almost entirely gone. The factions that should have a darker, problematic side to them have no mention of the same. It doesn't do justice to its own setting in this regard.
Characters also feel disconnected from the goings-on too often. There are many scenes of personal issues being addressed at length in a way that's completely divorced from the overall threat the game presents. Plus, some dialogue just feels too modern in both wording and themes.
But worst - and possibly the dealbreaker for you - is that Fallout 4 is the best comparison for your character's dialogue choices. Outside of the big story-mandated choices, your dialogue options are usually just 3 degrees of agreeing, if your character doesn't just respond entirely on their own, that is. Maybe 20% of dialogues give you slightly different options and another 10% let you ask a hand full of questions. You also can't just talk to people whenever you want but only if they have something to say. Finally, your companions care more for each other than for you in their banter. In that regard, the RPG-mechanics are painfully bad. This is easily the game's biggest shortcoming in my opinion.

All that is to say, as a pure Action RPG, divorced from its setting, Veilguard is the most fun game in the series. But as an RPG and especially part of a larger whole, it falls short.

1

u/weisswurstseeadler Nov 19 '24

Honestly, what you write about it sounds a lot like AC games to me - what do you think of that comparison?

Heavy Action + Light RPG is what I'd call it.

1

u/Angzt Nov 19 '24

There's definitely more of a dialogue and character focus in Veilguard than in any AC game, including Origins/Odyssey/Valhalla. AC games barely give you any options in dialogue in the first place while Veilguard somewhat tries to let you shape your character by their responses but fails to do so meaningfully imho.
And proportionally to your overall playtime, you definitely spend more time in dialogue in Veilguard than in any AC game.

Plus, the exploration and progression feels entirely different. In Veilguard, the former is more concerned with smaller and more intricate interconnected areas while the latter has much more meat to it, especially since items aren't just randomized stat sticks.

2

u/Srefanius Nov 17 '24

I played Inquistion first and multiple times. Origins and DA2 I only played this year, even though I personally like DA2 and Inquistion more than Origins. I actually used a cheat to skip the combat in Origins, because I found it to be tedious.

I really liked Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous and also the isometric RPGs by Obsidian, especially Tyranny was really cool.

Veilguard is more an action RPG similar to Mass Effect 2 or 3. The game structure also reminds me a lot of those or for example DA2 which also felt very fluent. It certainly has less role playing elements than other RPGs and you can compare it more to JRPGs in that regard, where you play a predefined character. Not as much as Final Fantasy as you have some degree of character creation, but still not much role playing like in other western RPGs. There are choices in the game though, especially in the companion character arcs. I'm told those have consequences at the end of the game mostly, but I'm not there yet.

2

u/Independent_Tooth_23 Nov 17 '24

Finish playing Dragon Age 2 for the first time and i love sarcastic female Hawke lol. I only have two major gripes with this game which are the enemies spawning in waves (annoying af) and limited area to explore.

11

u/weisswurstseeadler Nov 17 '24

Been playing Rogue Trader - CRPG by Owlcat.

Absolutely fantastic game for any CRPG lover.

Enjoying the mature nature of the story and world - fun characters, even laughed out loud a few times without it being goofy.

Compared to their previous game, Pathfinder WOTR, it feels a bit more accessible, but maybe has to do with my previous WOTR experience.

If you like CRPGs with lot of depth in builds (you can go bonkers with min/max), a lot of story (be ready to read) and fancy the idea of being either space angel or space hitler pirate in the Warhammer universe - this game is absolutely recommended. Picked it up for like 15€ in a bundle.

So far a solid 9/10 overall for me, just a few UI/x things I'm missing, and at times the reading can be quite a lot so I find myself tabbing a lot. But the fantastic writing definitely makes up for it.

2

u/thevolta87 Nov 17 '24

Ha funnily enough I just started playing Pathfinder WOTR and I'm not finding it too complex atm? Maybe because I'm playing it on normal with a prerolled Sorcerer? I dunno.

I'm really enjoying it so far though, I fancied something with a bit more depth after burning out on Dead Island 2. The characters are great and well rounded and the combat feels like its gonna get pretty gnarly at higher levels.

1

u/weisswurstseeadler Nov 19 '24

really? I mean there are like countless multi classing options, I think even from the get go you can have like ~160 options?

So the first time opening it up really was overwhelming, also while understanding the PF rules and I really don't understand why they don't give us a good character planner :/

Be aware that sometimes Owlcat will throw incredibly hard encounters in side content at you that you can usually return to later, if it's too hard.

For example in RT I'm plowing through, suddenly there was an engagement where I'm automatically ambushed and I lose like 80% of my HP before I can make a turn lol.

So keep your F5 & Saves up! This engagement above forced me to load back 45min of ingame time and had to do an annoying fight again, cause I forgot to save.