Messages

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General Chat / Re: What games are you playing 2023: WGAYP, Engage!

« on: October 24, 2023, 07:59:21 PM »

I love Yakuza Like A Dragon/7, but the gameplay definitely trends toward the basic side. The central problem is that it draws inspiration for its job system from Dragon Quest (where it's usually kind of annoying) rather than Final Fantasy (where it's always great). I found a decent variety of attacks worth using, though; mostly the decision boiled down to costly AoE vs. cheap single target.

In any case, I'd rather play mid JRPG gameplay than mid ARPG gameplay, so still an upgrade! At least using healing items takes a turn, compared to Kiryu devouring an entire inventory of Staminan when he gets scratched.

The save-in-dungeons thing applies to most of the series, unfortunately. Even though they do the retry from checkpoint thing, too! I think a lot of the rough patches of the gameplay will get improved with the next entry, but that one is probably too much of a tradition. For some reason.

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General Chat / Re: What games are you playing 2023: WGAYP, Engage!

« on: October 09, 2023, 11:52:36 PM »

Just beat Monster Sanctuary.

It's more or less Pokemon meets Castlevania Symphony of the Night. That sounds phenomenal, and the end result is... quite good.

Exploration was fun, and tying most movement powerups to acquiring new monsters felt thematic and rewarding.

My biggest knock was that the system wasn't quite flexible enough to allow for each battle to feel significantly different. I used two 'mons from the starting area all the way to the end, and another from the second area was my party's powerhouse all the way through the final battle.

That third 'mon in particular did more or less the same thing in a hundred battles. My strategies evolved around it, but "fireball or poison bomb for single target," "flamestrike or poison cloud for multitarget" never stopped being a thing.

I have a love/hate relationship with SNAP. It has the same problem Ben Brode's previous game (Hearthstone) had. Players only use meta decks and there's no creativity. You can see one card in an opponent's deck and know what their whole deck composition is. Last month the only decks you ever saw were Kitty Pride Bounce, Galactus/Alioth, and standard Destroy (because it's dead easy to play and lazy people default to it). Then they nerf some cards and release some new ones and you get a different 3 decks to play against every month.

Isn't this true of any competitive ladder in a CCG, though? I'd be shocked to see an MtG Standard metagame more diverse than 1-3 dominant decks and 1-3 meta counters.

I've only ever seen one effective way to circumvent it, and that's to play Draft/Sealed/Arena/whatever the "Limited" format of the game is. But of course, that requires either playing a cube draft or shelling out whatever the in-game (or out of game) currency is for every play.

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Discussion / Re: Marvel Snap - Cards, Analysis, etc.

« on: September 29, 2023, 09:26:35 PM »

Love that Rickety Bridge analysis.

The amount of emergent complexity the game gets out of a single line of rules text is seriously impressive.

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Discussion / Re: Marvel Snap - Cards, Analysis, etc.

« on: September 24, 2023, 11:50:18 AM »

Hm, the main thing that interests me about them is how they shape play. They're an element that's (almost) completely out of both players' control, but which can dramatically alter the experience. That's not something you normally get in a CCG and I'm curious how impactful you find them in practice.

For one of the few examples I know offhand, if you see a Sanctum Sanctorum and your deck doesn't have a way to move cards to it, how much does that influence your decision to retreat early?

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Discussion / Re: Marvel Snap - Cards, Analysis, etc.

« on: September 22, 2023, 04:07:30 PM »

Logan's ability is very flavorful, but I'm disappointed it pigeonholes him into a single deck. He should be able to show up on every team!

... On the other hand, the meme of him being on every team at once may be outdated now; I'm way behind on Marvel lore.

If you get the chance, I'd love to get an examination of some of the Locations. The way their traits symmetrically shape play is one of the things that's most interesting to me about Snap.

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General Chat / Re: What games are you playing 2023: WGAYP, Engage!

« on: September 20, 2023, 02:16:32 PM »

I would definitely play This Way Madness Lies if you liked CSH! 

Speaking of, I just finished the NG+ playthrough. I ended up lowering the difficulty to the second highest again after encountering a particularly nasty random encounter that I couldn't beat. NG+ was fun and it was cool to see all the late late late game abilities and be able to play with them in an environment that put of a fight. Finished with the two playthroughs in about 23 hours.

Nice! A more bite-sized JRPG experience sounds great.

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Discussion / Re: Marvel Snap - Cards, Analysis, etc.

« on: September 18, 2023, 04:27:18 PM »

I haven't gotten into playing Snap yet, but I've watched a few matches, and your deep dives into these cards have been super cool.

The thing that impresses me the most about the game is that it's the least Magic the Gathering CCG I've ever seen. No knock on Magic! I enjoy that game a lot. But it casts an immense shadow over the genre it created.

There's some of that lineage here, but it's distantly related indeed. Everything feels far removed, from the structure of competing over lanes, to the ultra-simplified statlines with complexity loaded entirely onto abilities (many of them one offs), to the emphasis on score differential via the Snap mechanic, to even the onboarding model of unlocking increasingly complex sets of cards as you level up.

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General Chat / Re: Sigs & Avatars! Re-branded for Maximum Profit

« on: September 18, 2023, 04:01:06 PM »

Updating my signature to link to my current writing project, Eye Opener, a mobile progression fantasy on RoyalRoad.

Which also reminds me how long it's been since I posted here (since Brigandine came out on Switch). Yikes. And how long it was between that last time and the time before (in another epoch, basically).

Yikes.

Nonetheless, I'm forging ahead in the hopes some of the first folks to ever enjoy my writing will continue to do so! And also to remind myself that overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer to post about games here more often.

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General Chat / Re: What games are you playing 2023: WGAYP, Engage!

« on: September 18, 2023, 03:46:43 PM »

I'm glad to hear the gameplay holds up in This Way Madness Lies.

The premise and pixel art looked interesting, but I'd somehow managed to miss that it was a Zeboyd game. Which generally feels like a positive even though Cosmic Star Heroine is their only game I've liked without reservation. Addressing the one strat fits all issue with CSH by way of enemy composition sounds super encouraging.

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General Chat / Re: What games are you playing 2020: The true last year of the current decade

« on: November 25, 2020, 01:48:00 AM »

Brigandine

After I wrapped up my Mana Saleesia playthrough I was worried the game didn't have enough teeth to remain fun. Playing Guimoule dispelled my concerns. Constant aggression is a lot easier when 1) you have Rudo on your side and not against you and 2) you don't start the game bordering Norzaleo. I think I lost more fights in the two castles on the Guimoule/Norzaleo border than I did in my entire first two campaigns, and even the wins took real work.

The AI still can't handle aggression on the strategic map, but on the tactical level those were some very engaging fights.

Highlight: Conquered the Shinobi capital with Eliza's team, but at the cost of Sugar and Kate getting wounded. Rather than stop my attacks for an entire turn, I risked trying to solo the final Shinobi province with Eliza and managed to pull it off.

On the one hand, I do agree that Eliza feels less impactful than Rubino or, certainly, Rudo. On the other hand, she was the only knight I had who didn't seem to lose repeatedly and her team did almost all the conquering - 50% of Shinobi, 100% of Mirelva, 100% of Gustava, finishing off Mana Saleesia. Darian folded to status effects trying to lead a push into Norzaleo, got the Brigandine of Freedom, and then folded to warp. Muah and Cain got bloodied on the Norzaleo border, too, before being transferred to more productive areas. The rest muddled through against Mana Saleesia mostly by outlasting them and waiting for the AI to make poor summoning choices; even then I wasn't able to close the deal until Eliza's team got through Mirelva and attacked Rudo's final stronghold.

It feels like Guimoule has a bunch of "pretty good" knights, few who are terrible but none who dominate. Which isn't a great place to be when you get to pick 90% of your battles.

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General Chat / Re: What games are you playing 2020: The true last year of the current decade

« on: November 10, 2020, 03:06:30 PM »

No argument that Gilliam is worse than a halfway decent fighter-class knight! However, if your goal is to attack and mostly win on every front in every season (or every other season in areas with awkward chokepoints), his ability to lure the enemy into making bad decisions is good enough to make him useable. Better than the knights who are both terrible and low level, at least!

If the AI could handle aggression better, or if it were multiplayer, he would indeed be essentially unusable outside of questing.

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General Chat / Re: What games are you playing 2020: The true last year of the current decade

« on: November 09, 2020, 04:21:01 PM »

To escape shame, I'll reply for the first time in... let's call it "a while..." and say I have, in fact, been playing Brig! And availing myself of your knight ratings as I do so.

First playthrough was Norzaleo on Medium, second, currently ongoing, is Mana Selesia on Hard. Despite bumping the difficulty up and agreeing with you on the quality of most individual knights, I haven't found the latter noticeably tougher.

Seems like a playstyle difference. I basically didn't quest until my borders were stable, which resulted, yes, in a lot of dead monsters, but also in faster stabilization, more XP, and perhaps most importantly, the AI constantly on the back foot.

The in-battle AI is improved from original Brig, but the strategic AI still seems to get completely shellshocked by constant aggression. I'm at the point where neither of the remaining nations (Norzaleo and Shinobi) can reach the other and during the whole campaign, I think the only time a city changed hands from one AI to another was a single Norzaleo attack on Gustava, prior to my having a border with Norzaleo. (The AI did drive also me back from one city where I had weaker defenders, and take one I had to cede to retreat to a chokepoint; I'm specifically talking about them fighting each other.)

I also used Selena and Gilliam extensively for attacks. Granted, I didn't know why Selena would be a lategame issue and was initially caught off guard, but in the long run it still seemed like the right choice to use her. The late and even midgame was already a steamroll; losing a little steam still left me with plenty of roll. Gilliam looks absolutely awful on paper, but I found him useful because he has so much HP for a mage. The AI loves to attack him when he's on the front line, but he's more or less unsnipeable (in the earlygame) and lives off his own Loopheal, which is % based rather than caring about his terrible INT.

Any word on what's supposed to be in the new patch?

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General Chat / Re: Steam Summer Sale 2013

« on: July 16, 2013, 09:31:15 PM »

Abso-freaking-lutely, especially on the exploration side. You're even scored on how many secret areas you managed to find in each stage, just like in the old days.

Sold. I miss that style of FPS.

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General Chat / Re: Steam Summer Sale 2013

« on: July 16, 2013, 08:02:23 PM »

Serious Sam 3, four bucks for the next 7 hours. DLC, 99 cents. The "classic" original games, sixty cents a pop. SIXTY CENTS. Remastered versions run less than two bucks each. Or you can get the entire friggin' franchise for $9.50.

I know the Serious Sam games have some of the feel of old-school FPSes. Do they just have the run and gun with more than two fucking weapons aspect (which is good enough), or do they have the exploration and resource management elements as well?

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General Chat / Re: Steam Summer Sale 2013

« on: July 16, 2013, 06:16:39 PM »

Scribblenauts Unlimited is back at 75% off on flash sale.

Sleeping Dogs is at 75% off. In my opinion, by far the best game of its kind.

Mark of the Ninja is 75% off. Excellent stealth platformer.

Dust: An Elysian Tail is on sale for the rest of the day. Only 50% off, but so, so worth it. So far I'm comfortable calling it one of the best platformers I've ever played, and IIRC the DL is pretty friendly to Metroidvanias.

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General Chat / Re: Books

« on: April 16, 2013, 11:41:54 PM »

Connie Willis's time travel books are so great. Make sure you read To Say Nothing Of The Dog too, LD. It is wonderful.

To Say Nothing Of The Dog is in the running for my all-time favorite book. All of Connie Willis's work is great, though, not just her time travel stuff.

The Dresden Files: Cold Days
I was extremely disappointed by several of the revelations in this installment.
Mab and the other faerie monarchs were originally human?
The Outsiders aren't a grab bag of weirder-than-weird Mythos creatures from infinite realities, but a monolithic worse-than-demons demon army?
The Winter Court has a cosmological purpose to defend the mortal world from the Outsiders and the Summer Court from Winter, even though previously Summer got a nice dose of both Good Is Not Nice and Nice Is Not Good?
The various minor villains Harry tangled with, and even the Black Council, are just Outsider mind puppets?
All of the above makes the setting less interesting to me than it was before. The actual story itself was the usual Dresden Files stuff, though, and a lot of fun. Same with the character interplay.

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General Chat / Re: What Games Are You Playing 2013?

« on: April 06, 2013, 05:24:12 AM »

LoL: I have become a support main. I shall stun all of the carries forever. Seriously though, still mostly playing support as it beats fighting over other roles.

I always get support picked out from under me in solo queue.

(I'm finally at the point where I can play other roles, but still main support.)

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General Chat / Re: What Games Are You Playing 2013?

« on: April 02, 2013, 07:40:51 PM »

Recettear - Finished the maingame on my second cycle. I misunderstood how time passed in the village and dungeons initially, which led to one Recette living in a cardboard box dream, but after that it was pretty easy to balance the different aspects of gameplay. I'm fairly sure I could've completed it in one run. I can tell there's interesting mechanical depth here, as well as more story, but I'm not sure the gameplay is the type that interests me enough to find either. It was a cute game acquired at a low price, that probably suffices.

Sleeping Dogs - Best GTAlike I've played. Melee combat is a blast with Batman: Arkham-style fighting, the driving mechanics are good, the parkour mechanics are good, I love Hong Kong as a setting, and the main character being a conflicted undercover cop suits my tastes better than either the more straight-laced police work of L.A. Noire or the straight-up criminality of GTA or Saint's Row. The Face system gatewaying purchases is... interesting? I'm torn between liking it and not, and ultimately think it could have been handled better, but it's cool they incorporated it. Weapon combat is the only thing I don't care for. Maybe because they show up rarely and are quickly lost, I can't get a grip on the rhythm of melee weapons and tend to drop them to continue fighting unarmed, even though they're technically better. The gunplay is imprecise in a way that's probably intentional, or maybe just doesn't feel as good compared to the slickness of the unarmed combat system.

League of Legends - A friend of mine scored a pentakill! I helped! This is likely to be the highlight of my League career. ;)

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General Chat / Re: NBA 2012-2013 Season: The King Has Arrived!

« on: March 02, 2013, 07:07:07 AM »

After the Grizzlies-Heat game, Magic Johnson and Jalen Rose talk about how the Grizzlies missed Rudy Gaye... when Tayshaun Prince held LeBron below 20 points for the first time in what feels like forever, and the Grizzlies finally lost their eight game win streak to the reigning NBA Champions.

Not even my seething envy of Bill Simmons, the one kinda-sorta-celebrity who I honestly might have been able to have the job of if I'd made different choices in life, changes how right he was there.

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General Chat / Re: Miscellaneous Links from 2013

« on: January 17, 2013, 02:36:00 AM »

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Eaj8IT63pok#!
The new FF. Final Fantasy: Sprite Porn

This looks hilarious.

Potentially unplayable, but hilarious.

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Game Design and Modifications / Re: Celdia's Complete Patch: 2nd [Beta]

« on: December 27, 2012, 03:43:05 PM »

Looking forward to trying this. I enjoyed the original CCP for its interesting classes, but it's really hard to go back to a less-balanced game after LFT. If you've gotten the balance to at least "better than unmodded FFT" then this should be well worth playing.

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General Chat / Re: End of 2012 polling!

« on: December 27, 2012, 03:22:07 PM »

1. Potentially collaborating on a project with my best friend. Overall this year promises to be a rough one, though.

2. All of the things? If I have to pick one, the end of Homestuck. I'm half-anticipating, half-dreading whatever the ending ends up being, but not having new installments to look forward to will be sad either way.

3. No, because I need to sort out what I need to do with the next year before I make any resolutions about it.

4. My best Christmas present (see below). Other highlights include seeing one of my characters drawn by a great artist, getting a new desktop for the first time in almost a decade, and the release of XCOM Enemy Unknown. It was a great year even if I was far from great in it.
EDIT: And seeing Avengers, and seeing the Hobbit, and some great roleplay, and... yeah, this year kicked ass in many repsects.

5. A friend's trust. Sappy as it sounds it meant the most to me by far.

6. Rewarding that trust. Also a Chia Hello Kitty because Hello Kitty, fuck yeah!

7. Noap.

8. Is turkey a seasonal food? If so, that, otherwise I guess sugar cookies.

9. The Humble THQ Bundle. It was $5, so no.

10. I did not meet them.

11. Planning, no. I'll either go to a local friend's party if any sound good and the weather cooperates, or I'll have an Intarweb Party.

12. This year and it's made my library books overdue. >:[

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General Chat / Re: Christmas 2012!

« on: December 27, 2012, 03:09:40 PM »

Socks are a freaking awesome gift. It is one of those things you don't appreciate until you're a little older and you realize just how useful they are.

Useful? Yes, but the best part about them is that New Sock feeling. They are so comfy until they're washed. ^_^

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General Chat / Re: What Games ya Playin' 2012 - Suplex a Train Edition

« on: December 27, 2012, 03:08:33 PM »

The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky

1998 called, it wants me back and I'm happy to go. Aggressively traditional right down to the first dungeon being a sewer, but executed with a lot of style. The combat system seems interesting (although whether it's only superficially so or actually has depth and challenge remains to be seen) and the writing is top notch. Estelle is a delightful main and her interplay with Joshua is fun.

I'm curious how straight they're going to play the various tropes they've breadcrumbed so far, and how SRS BSNS the plot is going to get. So far they haven't averted anything but they might!

Current predictions:

Cassius will not get killed offscreen but will disappear; if they go SRS BSNS mode Estelle (and Joshua if he hasn't left) will catch up with him and he'll die saving them
Orbments will turn out to have some hideous environmental cost and that's why monsters attack them
Estelle and Joshua will end up the canon ship because Japan loves them some siscon
The Empire will invade on the Queen's birthday
The Orbment being sent for the Queen's birthday will somehow be made into a bomb
Joshua is some kind of male Barrier Maiden
Joshua will leave the party at some point because of his Dark Past but later rejoin

I don't particularly care whether they play these straight or not, but I'd rather they not go full on SRS BSNS mode with the whole thing because right now the character interplay is the best part of the writing, and it takes a past master to keep up silliness like Estelle's when shit gets real without making the character seem emotionally hollow.

Battle for Wesnoth

I should stop playing Survival maps without a Less Randomness mod.

League of Legends

Still playing left-handed (mousing left-handed, anyway), so I've yet to seriously PVP in S3, but melee AD casters have suddenly become so fun. I used to be terrible as Pantheon and now I can lead a (Int bots, but still, it's not like my teammates are any better/worse for it) game in kills with him. Ravenous Hydra is too fun, Black Cleaver even after the nerf is great.

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General Chat / Re: Christmas 2012!

« on: December 27, 2012, 02:54:18 PM »

Pizzazz Pizza Oven
Pizza Cutter (I'm detecting a theme)
Trails in the Sky: The Legend of Heroes
All of the socks (all of them) (this is the best gift ngl)
Isotoner gloves
Old Spice gift pack (the sad part is even I don't know for sure if it's ironic)
Starbucks Doubleshot
Yoda glass ornament
Mad About Superheroes v2.5 (surely ironic)
$40 Steam Points card
Candy