Games You Played Today IV: Quest of the Avatar

[Chevluh]

Ah well, in a classic Capcom-style game there is no fireball button, it’s the punch buttons that are used. So to get one dedicated to fireballs you’ve gotta sacrifice a button that was for something else. Also since there are three punch buttons there are often three fireballs with different properties. So the addition of the fireball button is pruning the movelist.

Not to say that’s necessarily a bad thing! DNF Duel or Granblue have dedicated special buttons for example, and Granblue even keeps the three fireball levels even with the dedicated button, though their solution arguably reintroduces some of the fiddliness they seek to get rid of (you’ve gotta hold one of the other attack buttons before using the fireball). And I do think the world of DNF Duel, but something had to give, and it’s the movelist.

Also requiring neutral only reproduces one of the effects of the motion and there are others, but that’s more of a detail.

My point is more than you can absolutely make simplified inputs work and I find work in that direction quite fascinating, but complex inputs are not some vestigial thing kept around out of inertia, they bring lots of flexibility, depth and gameplay feel to the table beyond just the possibility of fumbling them.

[isfet]

i think it’s also worth mentioning that when you’re sitting next to someone, the sound of their inputs on the joystick and buttons is also kind of an aural clue as to what might be coming your way (or as a fake out), as these inputs have their own unique kind of cadence. i imagine this is less a thing if you’re playing on separate cabinets and can’t see each other. but yeah, i always liked that aspect of it.

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been playing Lagrange Point - what a cool game. i have no idea if it sold well, but based on the MobyGames data reporting that most of this dev team didn’t work on much else, i’m guessing…no? i imagine it being released right as the Super NES was coming out didn’t help sell it as an impressive technical achievement, but there’s something very fun about playing a Famicom game with an FM synth soundtrack. if anything, i think it gives the game a uniquely-modern feel.

i’m at around level 19 and just made it to what feels like the first real boss. as a necessity, it is kicking my butt and is the first real skill check i’ve encountered so far. random encounter rate in this game is pretty high, but what else can one expect? the battles have an interesting rhythm - if you just mash A and select attack, you can win, but it’ll take a while and waste your resources, so in reality, the fastest way to win fights is by actually thinking about them, which i find always helps to make random battles not feel like padding.

the battle system is unique in that all of your attacks and tech skills drain your “BP,” and each character has a super move that uses HP. thankfully, BP-restoring items are plentiful and also fairly inexpensive, so you never realllllly worry about running out. that said, to use them in battle, you have to equip one in a slot that would otherwise be used by armor.

the atmosphere of the game is really all over the place. the designs of most things are either kind of cute or goofy (not counting the mech designs), but then (plot spoilers) the literal pre-pubescent child who follows your party around is the first to get murdered by a mutant, with an entire cutscene for the event, too. this moment is really weird, too, because your characters don’t have much of a visible reaction to it, and when you find the kid’s father in literally the next screen, the dialogue makes it seem like your party is pretending they don’t know what happened to the kid? lmao

but that’s not a mark against the game - if anything, i’m really looking forward to how weird the atmosphere might get, or to what other weird plot twists they have in store.

[Mikey]

@isfet

i think it’s also worth mentioning that when you’re sitting next to someone, the sound of their inputs on the joystick and buttons is also kind of an aural clue as to what might be coming your way (or as a fake out), as these inputs have their own unique kind of cadence. i imagine this is less a thing if you’re playing on separate cabinets and can’t see each other. but yeah, i always liked that aspect of it.

I believe some tournament players with custom sticks have deliberate “dead” buttons on their hardware for exactly this kind of fake-out tactic

[drastic_bb]

one of my gaming plans is to hard mode s-rank every mission in armored core 4 / for answer… i’m pretty sure there isnt any coherent route guide for the latter???

i could be wrong but the guides ive seen online seem uhhhh confused… i am pretty sure you can only do the ending 1 route your first playthru and ending 2 route isnt unlocked until ng+… i could not get “defeat carbracan” or “defend line ark” (thats the one where u team up with white glint and it ends with you just kind of floating over the water looking at the horizon while ur operator is like “enjoy this respite its the only one youll get” wow amazing game) to show on regular new game (which afaik are required among a couple others for ending 2?)

and i could only get “destroy crade 03” (HELLO LAPDOG) to show after doing most of the arena battles (you first encounter oldking in them)

the route guides ive seen are focused on playing certain missions in certain orders but… i think the requirement for the orca route missions to show is just to be on ng+ and the main requirement for the oldking route is to defeat him in the arena

[ArOne]

My biggest Fight Game training feature I wish was more common was time control. Smash and Uniel are the only games I know off hand that give this option. Smash even has a move one frame forward button. It’s not super intuitive when you have to reach for a button every every frame but it allows for a lot of insight and training options. My dream feature would be a combo trainer that freezes the game between key input points if only as a tool to teach my fingers and my eyes to look for the right visual signals. As mentioned before in the thread the complexities of making it a universal feature but if it at least existed for the canned combo trials that come with most games seems feasible with those being a more controlled enviroment. The metaphor of fight game character being an instrument falls apart for me when I’m trying to learn a song because I can keep going if I drop a note or ruin the timing. In doing so my fingers are still learning where to move. There’s nothing I hate more than having 50-80% of a combo sequence down but there’s one point I keep dropping and I can only practice that point by doing the whole sequence again to get the right juggle/hieght properties that would only exist at that point and not in neutral. My brain hates that kind of grind and need a way to massage the problem element in smoother. UNIEL tries to split the difference by letting you auto play a combo up to where you dropped it but then you’re just trying to catch where the autoplay drops you and is a different mind space.

[doolittle]

@stylo

after this probably mother 3

would love to have a thread and revisit it myself when you play. it has aged strangely in my memory. it’s an epochal game for the series, jrpgs, and non-localized games, but at 16 in 2008 the predominant experience was self-alienation

delighted you’re enjoying earthbound

[Broco]

@Chevluh

[complex motions] bring lots of flexibility, depth and gameplay feel to the table beyond just the possibility of fumbling them.

This is all true, especially the point about forward input opening your guard, but I’m inclined to insist on my original simple idea of fumbling. Because I think it makes a deeper point about multiplayer game experience that often passes unnoticed

Brooks has a point on “it’s just got to be commercial tradition right?”. But looking a bit deeper, the real tradition is that fighting game players insist that, a few comic “RNG moves” aside, the game has to be purely based on skill.

But randomness is so essential to having fun in a social atmosphere. Think of the vibe difference between a family board/card game vs a game of chess. Fighting games want to be something in between. To be serious competition, but have frequent moments of surprise and laughter

Making moves so tricky to execute under pressure that you can’t get them 100% is basically treating the human nerve system’s electrical noise as a die, gaining many of the same experiential values while still feeling competitively rigorous

[drastic_bb]

yeah this is why super turbo is so fun… random dizzy / stun chance all over and that sort of thing… honestly i think that needs to come back.

[notbov]

I have currently landed on the opinion that Tower of Fantasy is basically what PSO2 New Genesis wanted to be if Sega had actually made a fleshed out game with content instead of shipping out a barren-ass world where all you can do is kill, collect and raise your gear score

instead, Tower of Fantasy is a game with a populated world with some extra quests where all you can do is kill, collect and raise your gear score. also they litter the open world with tokens for token-only gacha banners so they encourage exploration by giving you a gambling addiction. or they foster your gambling addiction with exploration. one of the two.

even in spite of my misgivings the game has a dumb endless PVE challenge mode that you see in similar phone action games and I’m just having fun hitting my head against that. but I’m not touching PVP. the PVP looks fine and mostly balanced but lol you’re not gonna get me to participate in a thing where luck or swiping means a significant power spike, you ain’t gonna get me that easily

now, horses. I’d swipe for horses.

[boojiboy7]

A lot of people have contributed so far, but here’s thoughts from me on STGs to get you into them:

• Deathsmiles 1: with obvious notes about the moe-ness of the aesthetic, it’s definitely the game that got me into Cave when it was put out for the 360 in the US. The scoring is a bit complicated, but unlike some of the other Cave games (Ketsui), it manages to be fun even if you aren’t paying attention to that. And you can watch a video of a stage and get the general idea of how to score better.

• Eschatos: It’s a beautiful game, from a weird timeline where the Dreamcast won and it just kept going. Pretty simple mechanically, but that does not detract from the enjoyablility at all. As a bonus, it ususally comes with Judgement Silversword, which is also a really good shooter on it’s own. JS should emulate on any portable thing you might have as well, so that it nice if you are looking to not spend money.

• Zero Ranger: Yeah, this is just a good game to play through, and actually included continuing as part of the plot of the game, so there is that as well. 1cc-ing it is a lot of time, but it also doesn’t super demand that of people, so if you don’t want to worry about that, it’s great for that. People will talk about how it makes references to a lot of other STGs, and it totally does, but lots of STGs also do that; as a genre, the games are almost always made in a dialogue with other games in the genre, so this is almost the best way to just get dumped into that.

• Xevious: It’s basically the granddad of everything in the genre, and it’s really good. Play the arcade version only, in the right aspect ratio. The Arcade Archives version is solid as heck (and even includes options to simulate the logo burn in that was common on the machines, lol). Just put a credit or two in a day until it clicks. There’s more secrets in it than you think. It’s an STG but also a “talk about it on the playground with other kids” game.

• Aleste: This series is weird, but there are two games in it that I would totally tell people to play: Musha Aleste and the M2 Aleste Collection (mostly for the GG games). Musha has an amazing soundtrack, and is not particularly challenging once you get how the powerups work. The GG games are all solid, and they simplified the powerups a bit (the M2 ports also give you good devices for tracking them), and the third one was 2020’s best Game Gear game easily. The one major valid complaint about anything made by Compile is that the stages can be too long, so if this bothers you, totally understandable.

There’s obviously tons of other games in the genre, but this might be the place to start. A place to definitely not start: early Toaplan stuff. The M2 releases of these are wonderful, but they are not friendly games at all. Wonderful games, but not the place to start at all.

[Brooks]

the sf3/2i bundle port on the dreamcast let you slow the entire playspeed down like x8 and i always thought this was incredibly sensible to have in a training mode for a thing that wants to you to nail dexterity under pressure
if i’m learning a new song i’m not playing that shit at native bpm straight away

[Broco]

@ArOne

My biggest Fight Game training feature I wish was more common was time control.

There’s maybe reason for optimism here. The engine tech challenges of a time control feature are big. But many of them are the exact same difficulties involved in rollback netcode (itself a type of time control).

Now that rollback is becoming a universal feature, time control might not be so hard to add to a training mode anymore

[drastic_bb]

shmups chat has inspired me to hook up the gorgeous hrap2 an old lover gave me as a gift and i had a megabrain genius moment:

in battle garegga i think golden bat is kind of considered the easiest ship: ive read somewhere they polled a bunch of players and the majority got their first 1cc with it. it can be kind of finnicky to select bc you have to press a+b+c on the exact same frame to pick it; there’s no input buffer there… BUT during the fade to black after you insert credit → press start you can tap left and hold abc and it’ll buffer those inputs… meaning youll select golden bat every time!!!

i lied… i do have a favorite and it’s garegga. shinobu yagawa is the best game designer of the genre imo

shmups + fighters belong together

[Cerium]

Batrider IS a fighting game and I will die on this hill (moreso than change air blade)

[captainlove]

Played some We Are OFK. I feel like I watched a TV show about people looking at their phones. The music video sections are pretty horrible so far.

The writing is very preoccupied with nailing the tone in a specific way I can’t quite pinpoint.

Also I don’t wanna shit on it too early but there are some really static backgrounds that are making me wonder why there was so much buzz.

[Chevluh]

20th Century Food Court finally clicked for me after watching someone else play through the first two levels. I wasn’t using the step button!

So it took me two days and many of my solutions are dreadfully suboptimal but I’ve finished it! I even enjoyed it somewhat! That leaves the exapunks arcade game and a couple chipwizard levels.

[drastic_bb]

ok on further thought i dont actually think what’s happening here… what is happening i think is that a) the ship select screen is not polling for button-down inputs, but rather for button-on inputs and b) the cursor for ship selection is movable a few frames before your ability to actually select a ship is.

so basically what happens is you have a short timespan, maybe half a second, 30 frames if even to move the cursor over the ship, and on the first frame that ship selection becomes active it reads the button-on abc inputs.

battle garegga… a game where even the ship selection screen has tech. it’s that kind of game! this is the kind of thinking fighting games promote

i’m not sure this comes up often bc u can just bind an abc button on the m2 port or on emulators but like if i were playing garegga at a real arcade id want to use this!! to be sure i got my preferred ship every credit, u know? idk i just think it can be inconsistent otherwise but maybe i’m just goofy

so this is the thrill of discovering tech…

[Tuxedo]

Neon White: This game really is trying to make speedrunning Quake accessible to your grandpa, thanks to:

• the floatiest jump in gaming
• explosions that deal no damage and always send you up no matter what
• enemies that never move
• most levels being between 30 seconds and 1 minute long
• extremely generous hitboxes, time to react, bullet counts, and ace medal times (in general)
• no complicated button press sequences
• unlockable shortcut hints

It’s a total success. The other half of the game (finding hidden gifts in levels) is less novel but still great

Feels like the game had a vaporwave aesthetic before ditching it upon realizing it was played out

@lofia

im almost done with neon white and for as much as i like it i feel like it’s gone on just a little too long. maybe it’s my fault for how i approach the loop of the game; finish a mission, go back, ace all the levels & get the gifts, give out gifts and do the associated side quests and trudge thru the dialogue, then finally go to the next set of missions.

Oh god I won’t even leave a level mid-mission until I get the gift + ace medal

Phantasy Star 4 : I missed that this game was all about climate change, and Muskian climate control centers going disastrously wrong. There’s even one NPC panicking because nobody’s doing anything. Grim. The translation really doesn’t do it justice though

I’m happy to say that the anime stills are still mind-blowing in 2022. And the vehicle battle UI is so beautiful…

This game has a reputation of being very breezy… I mean, compared to Phantasy Star 2 and 3, sure.
But I’m trying to play carefreely and a lot of mechanics directly contradicting each other are getting in the way.

1. You can setups macros to automate battles (great) but in practice people join and leave the party all the time, and you have to rework all your macros from the start every time, you can’t just edit them

2. Macros have character act in the order they’re set up; faster characters wait for slower characters to act first if they’re lower on the list. This is very bad because turn order is hugely influenced by RNG… If you ask Rune to act first but he gets a slow turn, every enemy will act before any ally… So macros are often sub-optimal.

3. The one silver lining, I guess, of the fixed turn order is that it greatly facilitates combo attacks between different characters… But I’m near the end of the game and I have learned literally 0 of them, lol. There’s no in game info on which combo attacks exist, and why would I go have everyone use all their special skills every turn so they could randomly learn unnecessary combo attacks when this is a resource management RPG?

I love when I’m in an ancient weapon facility and open a regular chest and my robot ally goes « this is the God Laser, I am compatible with it » and they get a new skill

[Rudie]

@Tuxedo

Phantasy Star 4

Looks like you are playing an official release but there are patches and translations that even it out.

[Broco]

Yeah Phantasy Star 4’s official translation is just sad for a 1994 RPG. Definitely not to be played vanilla. I guess you already close to beating it this way so the advice comes a little late though…

I keep thinking of diving into the ROM and seeing how hard it is to implement a variable width font routine for PS4, so more text can fit into each textbox and all the menu words aren’t constantly getting cut off. The recent retranslation is a big improvement except that it didn’t try to improve the font (honestly I might have participated in that project if I had heard about it early enough — for some reason this has been a particular itch of mine)