that’s the first thing i’ve read that’s made me want to try it again, actually
2 Likes
i have an affection for dragon’s dogma, but i’ll never finish it. i ran out of steam a short time after getting to the big city, and then dark souls 3 came out - the worst souls game, but still a tighter, more addictive game loop than dragon’s dogma. i loved the goofy-ass npcs, both the pawns and the people in the world, and fussily putting stuff into airtight jars so it didn’t rot. in the end, i got bored of the combat, and wasn’t excited at the prospect of developing my character any further
3 Likes
I’ll always love dragons dogma because a powerful lesbian caught me to save me and gently set me down when I got dropped out of the sky by HARPIES, ARISEN!!!
9 Likes
i bounced off it like three times on launch but came to love it in 2019 during a really fucking hard time
also really into some lad I talked to twice confessing his love out of nowhere
4 Likes
I liked Amnesia a lot at the time. I only played it once but I remember the light resource management being the thing that I think hooked me. If a horror game gives me anxiety that I used too much of an item at the wrong time then I’ll probably like it
3 Likes
i love love love love dragons dogma but if you don’t think the combat and character building / dress up can carry it for you then you should probably bail, they’re the best things about the game imo. the level design can be really good but the main game doesn’t have frequent enough set pieces. Bitterblack Isle is perfect tho
i will defend the pawn system which (while flawed) is still a really unique way of managing a party in an action game and as basically every player has a story about their friend’s pawn who saved their ass countless times i feel like it was a pretty successful multiplayer experiment. i love the way pawn disposition drifting over time builds in this resistance to micromanagement and makes your main pawn come across as a fussy guy instead of another stat sheet to optimize
19 Likes
Chess Racer Management Sim 2023: Emotions Update
7 Likes
I finished Full Quiet. In the end it really was like a little actually solvable NES La Mulana. I haven’t really been engrossed in a game that required my full attention like this for a while.
It takes a surprisingly careful and holistic approach to its geography and ecology while also having completely inane puzzles like
Note that the weird little laughing guys hiding in doors in the cliffs are color coded + match their colors with the signal coming from a tower and the morse codes above the doors
I got a NES-ass glitch during the last battle by killing the boss during its flashy attack which made my character sprite disappear forever. Including during the Climb To The Top and the ending cutscene. I think my guy is supposed to be on this boat:
Bonus screenshot
Sephonie: I was really down for Analgesic Productions doing a more straightforward story after Anodyne 2. This is still about finding creatures and linking to them (completely changing the game interface), we are still exploring the self and connections between ourselves through memories of late 90s videogames.
I love the artificial but slightly devious level design, with the Main Path sometimes feeling like an unintended route, and hidden collectibles at the bottom of a level, forcing a restart after collecting them.
Movement sucks! I just hate moving around in this game. Death knell for a 3D platformer. Wall running feels bad and unintuitive, the control scheme is confusing, button presses are uncomfortably heavy and movement feels unresponsive. Every new area I’m exhausted instead of curious.
The puzzle mindhack minigame is too easy and relatively minor in the end, but always appreciated as an escape from platforming
To think this’d be a perfect game as a Mario 64 hack
13 Likes
The saving grace of Soma was when they patched in a mode that disabled the trademark frictional monster. Turns a weak stealth horror title into a strong walking sim horror
5 Likes
this is what killed anodyne 2 for me. i simply didn’t like moving around in it at all
4 Likes
i also, like, absolutely love that my pawn won’t shut the fuck up it’s probably the best thing about the game
11 Likes
I am so glad I am not the only person who can’t stand movement in anodyne 2!
3 Likes
Now what if Anodyne 2 felt worse and was 90% challenging 3D platforming over death pits
3 Likes
Yeah I couldn’t even bring myself to finish the sephonie demo
1 Like
Sephonie felt bad until I realized that it was expecting non analogue shoulder buttons. With my switch pro controller it fit together in my head. This is kind of an annoying requirement but if you have hardware that works that way you need to try it.
The friction is also really interesting and really wedges it into your brain when it starts making sense. It’s much more puzzle than dexterity when you get it down and I really like it.
The writing is also fantastic in it and takes a lot of angles that I haven’t really seen in too many games. The like…exploration of immigrant diaspora that the game is exploring is really something else.
IDK, I’ll defend their shit to the end of the earth because I like how they don’t feel like other games and the writing is fucking fantastic and unique.
5 Likes
I think Soma might have benefited from some kind of halfway-safe mode. I thought that making the monsters totally harmless defanged the game a little too much, even though you’re right that the hiding/chase scenes were more of a carryover from Amnesia than a key part of the experience.
A developer that would really benefit from that type of safe mode setting is Bloober Team. Especially in Observer, where every place the game expects you to do something other than observe is frustrating and tedious.
3 Likes
Bloober would really benefit from getting a good writer or game designer on their team, too.
4 Likes
welcome to the hellish hidden world of pay to play Minecraft servers
2 Likes
Amnesia never worked for me, I felt the game part eventually actively undercut the atmosphere the game was cultivating and ultimately lived and died by. I was awful at avoiding… almost every enemy in the game, so the game simply removed them after they got me once or twice and let me walk on by. This sort of had a loop effect of “oh, I guess I don’t need to worry about them” → “monster got me again” → “hey, the monster’s not here any more” → “oh, I guess I don’t need to worry about them”. Sequel was probably a bit worse, Soma was pretty snazzy though.
I started playing The Forbidden City and got to the point where the game revealed the big twist that I thought was pretty obvious within the first 30 or so seconds. I also am on my third loop and the way the second loop ended was both pretty hilarious and raises some interesting in-universe moral questions. Basically everyone in this place is bound to the golden rule, which is basically if one person “sins” everyone in the city is turned to gold and dies. Murder and theft appear to be the big no-nos with there being active debate about what does or does not qualify in the eyes of whatever god handles this as sin. Well I stumbled upon an assassin dispatched to here to kill someone (who ended the first loop by trying to kill me) and told him the person he was looking for was in an unsturdy building I knew would collapse whenever someone entered. FWIW I was given permission to dispatch of this person by the magistrate in charge which might have made a more direct approach okay. Anyways afterwards I mention this to the person I prevented from going into said building (I saw them walk into it the first loop and die) and they ask about me knowing that the building was gonna collapse, to which I say yes. They then go “…so wouldn’t that be murder?” and the golden rule then goes into effect. I am now vaguely curious if what matters not if an action itself is bad but that it is perceived by at least one person in here as so.
10 Likes