Games You Played Today Oratorio Tangram

i was playing shiren 5 today, and a thing happened.

so I was in a shop, and there was a 1000 value scroll in it. I knew that monster house scroll was a potentiality there, but I didn’t actually think it would do anything in that case, so I figured it was safe to just read while in the shop.

it was a monster house scroll.

apparently, in 5, this teleports you randomly to another room, which it can turn into a monster house, and then makes a monster house there.

which means i got thief status once i was teleported out of the shop, because i had just left the shop without paying.

so what happens when you become a thief in shiren 5?

every enemy turns into a shopkeeper.

there was no coming back from that! crime doesn’t pay after all

it actually didn’t play the thief music, it played the special monster house music! i suspect that’s a bug, but it’s pretty cool music:

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I had no interest in another Fire Emblem, but I read about the new one (Echoes) and it seemed peculiar enough for me to get it. It’s a weird thing and I recommend it.

It’s a remake of Fire Emblem Gaiden (=2)
They added some lovely animations (that I turned off immediately), 90s anime plot / support conversations, SMT4 dungeon exploration and point and point and click town exploration. You can pick up oranges in villages and have your characters eat them in battle.
It’s the rare Fire Emblem game that rewards promoting early on, you start with 4 villagers and if you don’t promote them ASAP there’s one guy with a shield who will absolutely ruin your team in like the fourth map.

Every new thing from the recent Fire Emblem seems gone (skill/ pair up system / dating sim / breeding) and overall it feels like a continuation of the GBA games, AKA the good ones

This is all pretty allright but unexciting. Now there are two things I LOVE about it:

  • Mila’s turnwheel, a mechanic entirely ripped off Invisible Inc: you can rewind time up to 3 times per battle right before your character died
    (Or whenever) and rethink your strategy. Fire Emblem games always had an issue with permadeath and this is the first time they’ve found a sensible solution to it.

  • Ancient map design: all the maps and enemy placement are unchanged from the 1992 game. They are really weird and archaic, sometimes overly punishing, large, or simple, and they feel completely anachronistic in the context of such a nice looking 2017 game. I love this dichotomy, and the constant surprises it entails

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I hated the archaic map design! Still, the way they completely remake everything around it, but leave it unchanged DOES make this an unique experience. The original chiptunes get those unexpectedly rich musical arrangments, the terrible basic dungeons turn into fairly detailed 3D spaces, the plot gets fleshed out in all the possible ways, the pixelated faces get redrawn into those great Atelier-styled portraits… and then, you’ve got those NES-styled, neverending open fields with single chokepoints here and there. It doesn’t make any sense!

I can’t wait for another game with Conquest level of map design, but Shadows of Valentia offers some JRPG-feeling pleasure in constantly optimizing your unit formation, securing your weakest units and squeezing all EXP possible from every turn. It reminds me of why I play Terra Battle from time to time, actually.

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Finished Dark Souls 3. Had to replay half the game because I lost my save. This probably contributed to my feeling of exhaustion towards the DS formula. I still like the first souls game I played the best (DS1), and I wonder if that’s the only reason why. I don’t understand why so many elements are carried over from one game to the next. Going through yet another swamp area, Anor Londo, archives, demon area… , picking up the same weapons I’ll mostly never use and getting fed slightly different versions of the same lore I found enchanting the first time but whose shine only diminishes with every iteration… it’s just extremely mind-numbing. It has some of the best level design in the series, with convoluted, often disorienting geometry, but so much of it is retreading old ground, asking “remember this? it’s that but we’ve changed it a tiny lil bit”. All that familiarity makes one hyper-aware of what it’s missing. Everything is less evocative. There’s no sense of scale or desperation, you always feel big and completely in control. There’s too many bonfires, too few NPCs, and too many of the areas and enemies feel arbitrary and thematically boring. Most bosses are simply overpowered sword wielding humanoids, making summoning the obvious choice… I still kind of enjoyed it but I think I’m done with the series for a while, which is a shame because from what I’ve heard the ones I’ve yet to play (Bloodborne and Demon’s Souls) are probably the most interesting.

Dipped into the overwatch free weekend on PS4. it’s kinda fun! and i’m much more comfortable with the bright-lights fan-baiting scattershot personality in a game like this than i would be with some self-serious milspec titanfall or whatever

And here i am debating giving blizzard even more of my money for a multiplayer game when i have no friends to play it with. hm.

Titanfall really isn’t too hardcore military or self serious at all

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I was talking to my bro about it and I think it exists in a tough spot between superficially being too militaristic for people who don’t like CoD and too anime for people who do.

I am a weeb who loves CoD so it’s my favorite game, natch.

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whereas I mostly dislike both cod and anime and adore it

I am demonstrably not a great consumer sweet spot though

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TF1 was definitely some weird milspec anime thing whereas TF2 has the definite identity of a dumb, fun Hollywood blockbuster owing to its bombastic campaign, a thing that everyone should play

How anime are shurikens that explode into thermite and kunais that create sonar pulses? Cuz TF2 has those.

My only hang up on TF2 is how bad hipfire feels for anything not an SMG or Shotgun.

flatline 4 life (I think that’s what the really good AR is called, I haven’t played the game in a couple months)

for some reason, i have been playing metal gear online 3 recently.

when the game works it’s pretty amazing.

protip: wake up early on the weekend so you can play with all the japanese players.

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I finally got around to finishing Energy Breaker. It’s pretty good!

It actually tries a lot of interesting things mechanically, which all work to a limited degree, and the battle system gets pretty good by the end. Most battles seem to have an optimal approach, but they’re not puzzles with solutions. It feels like it actually rewards skill. The best spell in the game also has a tiny dragon poop on your enemies, which atones for many sins.

The translation is breezy and overall excellent jarpig writing. I don’t think I cringed once? The plot is thoroughly unintelligible, of course, and – unless I just got the bad end – the game takes a ludicrously dark turn at the end: The final screen has totally-not-Shadow party member Leon dead on the ocean floor, his scarf and hair waving in the current, and the word ‘END’ in the corner. Also it all maybe takes place in Lufia’s prehistory? Someone’s going to have to explain the ending to me.

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Been switch back and forth between Last Resort (on the Neo Geo CD) and Persona 4 (yep, OG P4) on PS2 (since my PS3 decided to corrupt my save files from the PSN version).

Last Resort feels so much like an Irem pet project (probably because members of Irem were involved with its development)… something they threw together on the side and then handed off to SNK. It has really odd takes on their basic side-scrolling structure which has taken me several years to finally come to grips with how to play. Up until a week ago, I’d never gotten to stage 5 in a single credit… then I managed to single credit all the way up to stage 2-4. The game looks stunning (straight up Nazca Team visuals) and the Neo-CD AST (particularly stage 4) is pretty awesome. Definitely going to push for the all-clear (now that I’ve got the Pulstar no-miss clear out the way).

I’m hella-late to the party with P4, but I’m enjoying the rather eclectic organize-your-schedule pace of the game and the simplified polygon models with fair-detailed-textures.

By the way… is there anything resembling a sales thread on here? I should probably post more often.

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i tried to get back into this recently but i guess i lost my save and the game was trying to make me play through the prologue of mgsv again and im not up for that rn

Yo I still watch yourtubs so if you get a 1CC of Last Resort post that shiiiiiit

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oh man, that’s rough. yeah i wouldn’t wish that prolouge again on anyone.

long journey home kind of sucks, all these games that try to ape 80 Days just aren’t nearly as rewarding relative to the additional complexity and the controls aren’t really good-fiddly

oh well, tokyo 42 tomorrow

Played some more Cosmic Cavern 3671
I’ve stopped trying to play for score and have since been treating the game as a canvas

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