I last played it when the first few sets were releasing the US, and trying to read the current rules was like trying to catch up on Yugioh. There is so much going on now. I’m mostly waiting for the fan translation of the new video game to get released to help automate some of that learning.
I started Baldnurd’s;Gate, but I haven’t made it beyond the first town because I’m paralyzed by class choice. I started with a Stalker, but I also saw you can make a Necromancer and I’ve never been a Necromancer before I don’t think. I also installed Nicewind Gribble but it looks like an expansion pack of BG so I’ll probably try to move forward with BG, first. I also started Fallout 2 but only completed the Temple of Trials.
I’m trying to find CRPGs with good class systems that aren’t trapped in a generic fantasy setting. I also started up RO again on a private server, but it has really low rates so I’m not even to Thief yet (ugh, and you have to actually do the job quests). I pretty much always just make a Gank Rogue whenever I re-visit RO because of how much money you can make in the Toy Factory off of Christmas cookies and stuff.
4 Likes
Geneforge just got an updated rerelease recently and it’s real good, only three classes but they’re so setting specific, and its got a great setting, (fantasy but all fucked up gene splicing wizards making cronenberg servants)
4 Likes
Phantom Crash only has 3 arenas?? that doesn’t seem right, but this game sure does make the most out of it’s very limited game areas. I also like that it puts aim assist in the targeting UI because while a lot of console shooters have aim assist, I’ve never seen it on the UI, and it’s pretty helpful.
Surprised no other game has really done this type of mech gameplay, except maybe Hawken. Armored Core was alright. I’ve played some Mech Warrior. But nothing fast paced like this (Maybe Mech Assault might have this? I’ll have to get it)
2 Likes
i got my hands on a steam deck which has made it very easy for me to try out a TON of games from my steam backlog very quickly while lying flat on the couch, crushed beneath my various woes of the day.
- Black Future '88 - this game simply has too much animation!! This is to say that too many things explode into pieces that bounce around, throb neon, have wiggly little smoke trails or sprays of sparks coming off them, etc. With the pounding music this game fully exceeds my capacity for sensory input. I also don’t like this kind of roguelite very much. Put it down after about an hour.
- Rogue Legacy 2 - it is a LOT like Rogue Legacy 1. I think??? It’s been ages since I finished the first one. I don’t think this is different enough for me to keep playing it but I did play it for like 4 hours this week, which was enough time for me to remember all the reasons why this is not exactly my favorite type of platformer roguelike. In particular, I’m frustrated by all the types of guys who have a hard time hitting someone very close to them because their attacks only hit very precise and small locations to the right and left of them. In real life, a person would not be such a dumbass… in real life, a mage would angle her fireball slightly up, rather than shooting the fireball directly beneath the wizard… anyway. If the whole troubling disabilities/diseases mechanic doesn’t weigh on you too heavy, it’s probably fine. But I uninstalled it.
- Necrobarista - As a 3D VN this is fascinating stuff. However, there’s a lot of little things about the text UX and the way the game treats the player’s agency to advance the text that left me feeling pretty unsatisfied. The game allows you to advance the text very quickly, but each sentence requires like, 2-3 button hammer to get to the end of it, because there’s all sorts of pauses-for-effect in every sentence. On top of that, the text is overlaid over these little cinematic shots with moving cameras, character animations, etc. A lot of shots feature character animations that sort of “promise” a conclusion to a moment… like a person sliding a cup of coffee across a table, or turning away from someone, or moving across a room. You’ll wait to see if the animation concludes… and it never does? I never know whether I should wait to see the animation conclude or just advance the text. Anyway this VN ended up adding the “worried bout skipping something important” problem to literally every line of a visual novel, and IMO that problem should n ot be in any visual novel at all. I had a great time today thinking about how I would have preferred to experience this content, little UI tricks or freezes they could have done to make me feel less unsettled by whether I should hammer A or wait on every single line of dialogue, etc. But I am probably not gonna finish this one.
- West of Dead - seems cool! Spooky lookin skeleton roguelite with guns and a cover system. It’s fine. Didn’t really grab me, though.
- Calico - found this unnecessarily confusing. Spent like 30 minutes trying to find one person in this tiny town of pastel cat ladies and was completely unable to. Couldn’t figure out where to go or what to do to advance the main plot. Took forever to figure out how to add cats to my cafe. I found the cooking minigame, where you hurl bouncing and rolling physics food items around a kitchen countertop and have to land them in various bowls and shit, strangely stressful. I can see someone who is desperately hungry for this theme and aesthetic battling past that early game roughness, but I bounced off it pretty hard.
- Merchant of the Skies - Interesting stuff! A trading game with boats that you can upgrade, islands you can buy and develop, etc. I love games with R E S O U R C E S and T R A D I N G so I did have a bit of fun with it. I bounced off in the end due to some kind of obscured stresses where I was fucking myself over by not having enough fuel on hand, somehow. I ended up running out of money and “dying” basically and losing the game! It didn’t really seem like the kind of game I should be able to permanently lose and have to start over? But it is I guess. Maybe not the kind of trading game I’m looking for.
- Neon Abyss - yet ANOTHER platformer roguelike. Played three of these on the steam deck so far?? Like the others, this did not grab me. I am very curious about why there are so many roguelikes out here with a dark neon aesthetic, all trying to explore some dark shit about, like, guys being trapped in an unending cycle of death… which is a metaphor for how the world is bullshit… and all the powerups are, like, drugs and stuff… yeah!!! I dunno, not really for me
- Strange Horticulture - this was “verified” on Deck, which is generally supposed to mean that it is entirely playable with controller–but I found the interaction so frustrating and unresponsive that I just gave up. Could not figure out how to play this properly on the device, period. I hear good things about it though, and I enjoyed the demo, so I will try it out on PC some other time.
- Children of Morta - It’s fun!! It has controller input!! I checked this out a long time ago but got way more into it now that I was using those controller inputs rather than m+kb. My only complaint with this game is that on the tiny screen, the transitions where you are constantly zooming in and out on the pixel art are even more unsettling and bad than they are on a large screen.
Here’s a couple games I played which were in the yellow “playable on deck” category but not VERIFIED for the Deck–generally this means that they only partially support controllers and may lack controller icons onscreen, not tutorialize controller usage, or require typing into fields using the deck keyboard. I found them both frustrating to play on the device:
- XCOM: Chimera Squad
- Factorio
And here are some old games I like a lot that I tried out:
- Noita - Love this game on PC. very fiddly with the controller inputs. The wand selection screen in particular is baffling with controller inputs. Did not enjoy the experience. It’s “verified” but I hate the feel of playing this without a mouse.
- Vampire Survivors - yeah, this rules with controller, it’s great on the deck, no question.
- Caves of Qud - surprisingly good with controller??? This is one of my favorite games ever and I have played hundreds and hundreds of hours of it so I had the advantage of understanding it intimately and being able to guess what the game’s philosophy toward the controller was, so the lack of a controller tutorial did not impact me that much. THAT SAID, I bet most people would find it pretty difficult to figure out if they hadn’t expereinced the game’s learning curve on the PC. If you have, though, I recommend checking controller out.
20 Likes
Virtual On is, I think, the standard bearer of fast-paced mech action; it is well worth checking out.
7 Likes
Checkout SLAI on PS2 if you want more Phantom Crash, it’s the sort-of sequel to it, with quite a few more arenas, and their night versions.
1 Like
I played Poinpy today for, oh, 6 hours? Maybe less, but the pain in my wrist, arm, back and fingers tell otherwise. It has the same satisfying feeling of Downwell and chaining together a nice line reminds me of Kirby’s Dream Course. I played it on my tablet which is probably not the way to go. Definitely not because my body hurts now. I just wanted to help Poinpy.
7 Likes
Yeah it’s almost surprising how reminiscent Poinpy winds up feeling to Downwell given it has mechanics like the recipe system and the careful bankshots that have no equivalent in the original.
What ties them together is how both of them give you the ability to pause in mid-air for a second or two as you decide on your next move
7 Likes
Poinpy
12 Likes
I played the arcade version back in the day, and I found the twin stick controls to be more for child me to grok, even though it was very fucking cool
2 Likes
i finished vanilla and promathia in ff11. now i just need to finish zilart, aht urghan, wings of the goddess, and adoulin… there’s so much CONTENT in this damn GAME. i’m pretty far in adoulin and about halfway through zilart so those are probably my next directions.
these lines from the cutscene where i got my prishe trust were really good.
a good bride masters all manner of techniques
10 Likes
My curiosity got the better of me and I dipped my toes into Diablo Immortal because I’d yet to play any of those games and I figured for Free, I could see if it was my jam. It mostly wasn’t although I found myself going through the motions anyway. Then I guess I finished the tutorial section and it booted me back into the town and there were… other players milling about. Gross.
Anyway that’s enough of that for me, I think.
4 Likes
the thing that was emblematic of that game’s design decisions the most was that items have colored sockets now, meaning you can only socket that one color of gem into them. there are so few choices in this game that even customizing your equipment isn’t a choice.
dire dire dire
5 Likes
no, that’s pretty accurate to Diablo 3
1 Like
One of the big problems I see with literally every fucking private RO server is that they never adjust spawn rates to account for the considerably smaller player pool. So, you get maps with just tons of aggressive enemies and it’s particularly a problem for AGI-based builds because their dodge is lowered by an amount for every single additional enemy that attacks you, so you’re inevitably going to be pummeled into the ground and since your VIT is low, you can’t take too many hits but also most potions heal more if you have more VIT, so you’re getting less out of potions, taking more damage, and spending more money than a VIT build, and that shouldn’t be the case in RO.
I don’t know if most of these people have ever even played on a legit RO server, so I don’t know if they have a frame of reference for how spawn rates should be. If you have nobody going through your lower level areas dealing with the regularly spawning aggressive and semi-aggressive (enemies that only attack if they see you attacking something else) then they accumulate and then they all gun for the first sign of life, which are often going to be lower level players because a lot of the lower level areas that were good for leveling on have some amount of aggressive enemies defined.
I think the best option to play RO at this point is to just run your own server and use RO as a platform to run your own custom campaigns.
3 Likes
baroque wii CLEAR
what a game, even in an obviously compromised state. i’ll write that piece about it once i have school stuff under control and i’m tired rn so instead here’s eisaku kito’s 1998 model of dr. angelicus
27 Likes
i learned MUG in gemstone finally. i put it off forever because of how much it SUCKS ASS in ffxiv but holy shit it rules in gs
also i love BOLDLY ACCOSTING MONSTERS. so i can pickpocket player characters and mug NPCs. imma be fuckin rich
downloaded a script that shows me my mug stats for that play session just to make me even more pleased with my larceny
8 Likes
