December is the perfect time…
to start a band.
This month, join us in playing 1989’s releases on the GAME BOY at La vie en vert.
12 Likes
playing Morrowind, having a great time, then suddenly learned about drain curses, which permanently sap your strength (carry capacity) and can only be reverted with magic or potions.
game has some stupid shit!
10 Likes
Alchemy is the most broken system in the game so I recommend doing it more, generally
You can recursively brew cheap fortify int potions that will send your int into the thousands and
then make any kind of potion you want without needing to worry about your skill level
8 Likes
I enjoy the ritual of putting my bottle of skooma on the floor before interacting with merchants
12 Likes
Yeah it rules! Last time an Elder Scrolls game world ever had any kind of resistance to the player exploring it.
8 Likes
I guess Iconoclasts is the kind of overwritten, basic bitch search action indie game that people are so exhausted of, but I don’t play those ever and also it plays extremely smooth and is gorgeous so you know what, it’s good, says me.
7 Likes
just smoke that shit before you talk to merchants 
4 Likes
iconoclasts rules and gets real fuckin chewy in the back few hours, i like it a lot. and it’s really not much of a search action
5 Likes
out of the two new games i bought in the past month, SMTV and Voice of Cards, i’m finding myself mostly spending time with Voice of Cards.
it kind of reminds me of Unlimited Saga in terms of its pace, but the systems are little more obvious/usual. attack enemies with weaknesses, skip turns or use special techniques to collect gems (which are the currency for abilities, in battle), then wander around the tabletop world of cards while listening to narration.
i guess it’s the kind of thing that won’t appeal to those who have a regular D&D group or something, but if you’re in the mood for a leisurely, satisfying, not super difficult (so far) game that really wants to capture the physicality of TTRPGs, i recommend giving it a shot.
fun things (and maybe spoilery, though only minor):
- if you played the demo, the game pulls a Terminator 2/Kojima move wherein the characters from the demo are not your actual player characters, but are, in fact, your rivals.
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this is maybe the first jrpg i’ve played that touches on like…drug addiction/government testing of drugs on its medieval subjects? i’m sure there are others, but it’s appropriately morose in that Yoko Taro kind of way
but yeah, it’s definitely a Yoko Taro game, and if you were looking for more from him that is kind of simpler but also not a mobile gacha game, this does nicely.
5 Likes
Legit one of my favorite game stories of all time.
I love Robin, I love the characters, I love the worldbuilding, I love the direction the story takes. There’s so many emotional subtleties, and you can tell it was an 8-year passion project because it starts off achingly optimistic and gradually descends into pure exhaustion as you learn about the infinite fucked up things of the world. Absolutely perfect.
7 Likes
I really didn’t like Iconoclasts and it took me 12 hours to remember I did in fact write a review of not liking it.
“Ah yes I remember this” I said as I read the review.
1 Like
Did not realize there were Iconoclasts stans around here, I gathered the general impression was more in Rudie’s direction
I’m kind of in the middle I guess, I could do with less of the soy bants and tonal whiplash, but it’s not as grating as it is in other contexts because, well, it’s literally two-dimensional. On the other hand, I like its all-in gonzo anime style of Instant Melodrama.
And the game itself is very nice, almost too nice to the extent that it almost feels rote but there is still a spark of personality in there, and the pixel art is so good (like so, so good, a category above the Good Pixel Art that we have such large amount of these days in the indie space) that it all works as a fun package.
3 Likes
konjak is a great artist i like robins hair concept a lot. i liked the how unnerving the breeder area with all the statues was but the game felt a lot like a boss rush (like ecclesia or alien soldier) which wasnt what i was wanting going in, so i didnt get far
i might go back to it though because it feels good to move in i just SUCK AT BOSS FIGHTS
its definitely a game i think that has too much in the right place for people here to fall in love with it. 8 years of polish, like i think thats part of what made me bounce off it too
3 Likes
Can’t be overstated enough how much this makes all the little problems fall away, game feel good
4 Likes
I just really like how what feels like two-dimensional characters gradually unfolds into real emotional complexity the more you dig into their motivations and backgrounds. Not everyone gets this treatment, but the major named characters you see more than once do, and it leads to rather grim conclusions. That’s what impresses me about it more than the extremely high-quality pixel art or nice-feeling action-platformer melange, and typically why I recommend it to people.
2 Likes
I found Iconoclasts to be a flawed game that I still found myself rooting for while playing it, if it makes any sense. I kinda got the impression that the developer didn’t have like… natural gifts for stage or set piece design but had a lot of ideas in their head that they tried really hard to get working and into the game and if you are open to that kind of energy there’s enough in there to make up for the parts where it doesn’t quite work out as well as one would hope.
6 Likes
Edit: I ended up killing the guy for the pants, because this ludicrous quest fought against the base game’s broken pickpocketing, leaving me to assume the canon justification of “Why did you hire someone wearing assassin gear?”
13 Likes
Golly Jeeze Game Center CX 3DS blows.
2 Likes
None of these characters have meaningful relationships to each other. There is really one explicit relationship: the emperor, to whom you’re an enemy or an ally, or a vigilantly aggressive monster, or a bug. Actually, the other relationship is the player character. Everyone’s basically a puppet, attached to some text and voice samples. Which is like many games, which has yearning merchants audibly yelling “You’re not worth my time, scum!” and people begging you to retrieve their amulet or whatever, man I don’t even know what I’m trying to say.
It feels like my only way to shape the world is by killing and stealing. Every structure in the game has the sole purpose of aiding the player or harming them. It feels like such a traditional arcade game structure, or like an 8-bit computer RPG, posturing as state of the art while poorly optimized and buggy, and yet I find myself happily roleplaying a murderer and thief for hire, getting amusing player stories involving combat and thievery
8 Likes