What Games are you Playing 2017?

[Niu]

30+ hours and two (real) endings in, the game gives me a title screen like we're just getting started.

El, after you finished watching all the endings. Let me know.
If you are reading into it thus much already at this point. I am sure you'll be interested in the Fire of Prometheus, as well as Yoko Taro's out look of life in all this.

[SnowFire]

Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia
Went back to my replay of this recently, which I'd stopped in Chapter 3.  Am attempting to get maximum Achivement collection (despite Nintendo not saving achievements in a braggable location) of getting Fire Emblem (Hard Classic, 0 losses) and the LTC award (spend 500 combat turns or less total before the final boss).  Of course thanks to Mila's Turnwheel abuse, this is a very reasonable game for doing Hard Classic, and I've allowed myself a little cheaty DLC in the free gold & 2 Villager's Forks.  (The forks went to Kliff and Gray...  Kliff went Mercenary-> Mage so he'd get a massive speed boost in C1.  Gray waited until C3 as a Merc->Myrmidon, then is going Archer-but-with-super-speed-and-HP.  Tobin went Merc route, but with a Lightning Sword, so his bad Str is irrelevant; Faye went Cleric route.)  LTC means keeping random encounters to a minimum, but I think there's room for including SOME - especially for hitting some key promotion thresholds which makes later plot battles way more sane.  Just make sure you try and 2-round the randos and draw in at least 2-3 enemy mobs in the rando-battles.

Anyway!  Time to rant about an exceedingly minor plot point in Echoes.  So in Chapter 3, there's some nebulous plan to flood Zofia (the good team's country), and we have to go to the border and open the Sluice so that the water drains.  Okay, sure, whatever.  EXCEPT!  Only members of the royal family are allowed to open the gate.  The officially extinct royal family.

Let me add here that this isn't some mystically-bound holy waterworks that only opens to royal blood.  That would also be stupid, but at least gods & goddesses don't necessarily have to play by human logic rules.  No, there's a guy on staff, he knows how to open the sluice, he could open it, and he's all "go away, I ain't doing nothing unless the royal family orders it."  To the extent this is a Hint For Go Finish A Plot Point First, it's a plot point in the same exact location that requires no further battling or exploration, so it's not like it's much of a gameplay-required plot gate anyway.  I can only imagine the alternate scenario where Celica's mom's friend doesn't show up with a convenient royal circlet as proof of her noble birth.  "Yeah, look, I *could* have saved all those people who drowned and got their homes washed away, but rules iz rules.  That sluice ain't never opening again if the royals are all dead."  (Followed by the Sluice guy being beaten to death by the angry mob of refugee townsfolk.)

Also, (in)conveniently enough, there's another gatehouse where you have to pull the switch that Alm's team is at.  Sheesh!  That one at least has a solid plot-gate excuse.

So why is this plot point even in the game at all?  As best I can tell, it's because that this allows Alm to figure out that Celica = Princess Anthiese.  Since he noodles it over and thinks:
* Hmm, Celica's group went to the east, so obviously if anybody hit the Sluice gate over there, it'd be her group (rather than, you know, the Temple of Mila staff).
* And of course this guy I never met running the eastern sluice gate is SURELY an insane stickler for the only-royals rules.
* And if Celica's group did it AND the dude enforces the royals-only rules, it'd def be Celica who's the royal-in-disguise.  (Rather than, say, Genny actually being the Princess, or the Prince who got burnt up in a fire somehow surviving and going around wearing a cool mask.)

The thing is: Alm & Celica are going to develop the ability to have telepathic remote chats halfway into Chapter 4 anyway, where he can find out the truth that way.  What's the hurry that he needs to know now?!  Ugh.

[Sierra]

Nier Automata: Last night's plot in a nutshell: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIgDOehIoS0

I must be making progress, because I've reached that inevitable part in every Yoko Taro game where everyone starts dying everywhere. The big questions is just who the heck is doing all this shit with the shirtless duo gone. Do those Route C scenes differ depending on who you choose to play as? I went with prototype girl first, because new (aesthetically at least) PC, and when I switched back to hax0rs, it was clearly after all that tragedy occurred, not an "And this is what was happening elsewhere at the same time" sequence.

"I am a desert test unit designed to wipe out humanity." Sounds like Hegel to me, right?

[Ranmilia]

Do those Route C scenes differ depending on who you choose to play as?

They do not.  Scenes are exactly the same, the choices determine nothing other than which order you want to play them in.

[Niu]

Nier Automata: Last night's plot in a nutshell: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIgDOehIoS0

I must be making progress, because I've reached that inevitable part in every Yoko Taro game where everyone starts dying everywhere. The big questions is just who the heck is doing all this shit with the shirtless duo gone. Do those Route C scenes differ depending on who you choose to play as? I went with prototype girl first, because new (aesthetically at least) PC, and when I switched back to hax0rs, it was clearly after all that tragedy occurred, not an "And this is what was happening elsewhere at the same time" sequence.

"I am a desert test unit designed to wipe out humanity." Sounds like Hegel to me, right?

This is really the point I want to tell people to stop playing and go watch the play first before they continue.
A2 simply simply isn't as relate-able of a character without prior knowledge.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Got a Switch finally.

Immediately downloaded Battle Chef Brigade.

It. Is. Amazing.

Anyone who has a Switch or Steam should check this out.

The gameplay takes most of its cues from the Atelier series. The main character, Mina, is training to be a fantasy battle chef. There's combat sections, and cooking sections, and puzzle missions, and requests from townspeople and the like.

However, the big highlight of the game is how all of these different systems come together in daily GRAND COOK OFFS! Iron chef-style matches, only the chef has to go out and hunt their own ingredients during the match, and then bring them back and do all the cooking system puzzling within the time limit.

You eventually have to prepare 3 separate dishes, one for each judge, in a single match. It's hectic and crazy, and there's all kinds of different monster fighting patterns to learn (including how some monsters will EAT others), as well as different ingredients that monsters will drop that will have a significant impact on how you cook.

The whole package is topped off with some incredible-looking 2D hand-drawn animation and a really unique pseudo-medieval setting. The characters are all quirky anime stereotypes, but the game seems to be made by a western company, so the dialogue seems a lot more natural than usual. (It's possible it's just a really good localization, but I suspect it's originally written by an English-speaker.) Can't say much for the plot yet, but the zaniness alone is worth the $19.99.

[Sierra]

Got a Nioh for Christmas, so I tried that out before going to bed last night. Figured oh, I'll just knock through the first real mission, it can't be that long, but wow was that ever the confusingest peasant village I've ever had to visit. First boss took 7-8 tries? It was an educational experience. I started out with kusarigama + axe, have no long-term plans for levels and have just been taking whatever is immediately advantageous, which so far is ninja power because it boosts kusarigama attack, and also HP is good.

Will definitely finish Nier: Automata before digging into this, but looks promising. I love the cutscene after the first boss, if only because a ninja casually reaches into his shirt mid-discussion to pull out a cat, consult it like it was a pocketwatch, then shove it back in like this was a thing normal people do all the time in a conversation.

[NotMiki]

Nioh lets you respec 4 cheep so don't sweat stats and just try whatever weapons you want.  Other thoughts coming from the likes of DS3: Nioh enemies have short aggro ranges and stealth ninjutsu techs are very powerful.  Also, ranged headshots do ridiculous damage.  Sense Enemies is extremely strong (hard to come by early in the game unless you chose Isonade as your starting spirit, but it's a spirit shark so I assume you did.  Are you remembering to use Living Weapon?  I was constantly struggling to remember it.  May just be me tho.  Too much of a Dark Souls mindset to remember to go super saiyan.  Its activation gives you i-frames so it's great in many situations.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow - So I dusted off my GBA emulation folder and found this lying around? I'm liking it better than Hollow Knight as of now, at least. Currently frolicking around the Chapel, beat the second boss by spamming unlimited Skeleton Archer arrows. The Soul System is pretty fun.

[Luther Lansfeld]

Ace Attorney - Spirit of Justice - Very mediocre so far.  I'm in the middle of Case 2 right now, and the game is a combination of two things I don't care for much: AA4 and Spirit Channelling. The first case is very very dull, especially the defendent who is very apathy inducing which makes Phoenix's motivation make no sense, and the second case seems to want to wrap up AA4's plot, which would have been better to throw in the trash heap.

[NotMiki]

I think SoJ picks up considerably as it goes, but if you don't like spirit channeling I got some bad news for you...

[Sierra]

Nioh lets you respec 4 cheep so don't sweat stats and just try whatever weapons you want.  Other thoughts coming from the likes of DS3: Nioh enemies have short aggro ranges and stealth ninjutsu techs are very powerful.  Also, ranged headshots do ridiculous damage.  Sense Enemies is extremely strong (hard to come by early in the game unless you chose Isonade as your starting spirit, but it's a spirit shark so I assume you did.  Are you remembering to use Living Weapon?  I was constantly struggling to remember it.  May just be me tho.  Too much of a Dark Souls mindset to remember to go super saiyan.  Its activation gives you i-frames so it's great in many situations.

-Many DS gameplay habits translate here, in other ways it's doing its own thing. Main lesson is ki pulse all day every day, it should be automatic closure to the end of every attack sequence, running out of stamina here is a lot more likely to be fatal than it tends to be in DS. Also, at least from first boss, full run is often a more effective evasion strategy than trying to get perfect dodge timing down. Enemy attack tracking isn't as strong.

-I picked bird familiar.

-I mostly use Living Weapon for oni instead of actually learning how to fight them. I find this is hard to employ in any disciplined manner, which you kind of have to because you're not actually invincible while it's on, you just feel like you are, then you get hit and lose time from the meter. The temptation to spam attack is strong! Successful boss run didn't use it at all, meter wasn't full.

-The inventory bloat in this game gets totally insane, doesn't it.

[Luther Lansfeld]

Well, Spirit is literally in the name, so I am not surprised, per se...

[Luther Lansfeld]

XCOM2 - I've been hacking away at this game over the past week or so. It is very fun times, better than the original, but still nitpicks about the line of sight and other things. I feel like the dominant class in this game is Ranger, whereas in the previous game it was split between Assault and Sniper. I’ve gotten through the mission where you kill the Avatar, and it’s been a little hair ever since because most of my best people got injured trying to do that mission and my B team is definitely not up to snuff.

I like a lot of the new out of battle mechanics - the  Avatar project timer adds just enough tension that you can’t meander indefinitely, but it is not too threatening overall. I also like the moving from place to place grabbing allies instead of fine balancing act of losing countries that are on your side. The game has more of an underdog feel than the first game which is actually kind of fun. I feel like a few different things about the game are more streamlined.

The text is very small! I don’t really understand why the text isn’t a sensible size. And the load times are a freaking disaster. What is this, 1998?

Twilight Struggle - I downloaded this game and the Turn Zero / expansion pack on my iPad.

Turn Zero feels overall pretty irrelevant, but can add some extra spice to the game if you’ve played it too many times.

There are six events, and each player gets a two +1, one +2, and one ‘cancelling’ event that you can play on one of the six events. Three of the events are US slanted, and three are USSR slanted.  Each event has four outcomes depending on the dice rolls. Two events are good for the country that the event is slanted toward, and one event is good for the other side. The fourth event favors neither.

Probably the nastiest single event is rolling a 6 on the Yalta and Potsdam; it causes the US to automatically get a powerful, high-Ops card in their hand AND lets them go first on turns 1-3. This feels very crippling as a USSR player because it mitigates a huge advantage that they have; that they usually can coup before the US does. I don’t feel like any of the corresponding USSR events are as nasty. Losing Ussuri is pretty rude but not as game warping.

One interesting this is that one of the US events than can happen in Turn Zero is the Europe Scoring card can be changed so that control is the same bonus as domination (rather than instant win). Not that it comes up all that often, but does that benefit US more than USSR?

The new space race is… interesting, but most of the cool bonuses are too far in to really care about. USSR in particular really doesn’t want to chase the space race because of all of those nasty 2 op US cards.The rerolling one coup result per turn is really great, but you have to get 6 boxes in to get it! I hardly ever do.

The expansion cards … most of them feel irrelevant or boring. Who Lost China and Don’t Wait for the Translation are both cards that feel very niche (I guess an attempt to make MilOps more relevant?) As someone who prefers playing as the USSR, they feel (rightly) slanted against the USSR, but sometimes in annoying ways. For example, Berlin Wall is a ‘USSR’ card in the mid-war that gives you 2 influence in east germany and if you tied or behind in the space race, you go ahead one box. But if the US gets this and plays it, I don’t care much for influence in EG and I am forced to go ahead in the space race against my will! First Lightning is a USSR card but the DEFCON-suicide potential is strong for both sides. I’m not really convinced that the game needed more DEFCON suicide options, to be honest. At least the USSR can usually use this card on their first action of the round, but blah.

Kremlin Flu is a game warping card that feels out of line with the general philosophy of player autonomy that the game has, especially after the removal of the dreadful Original Aldrich Ames card. It has the potential to either a) give US back to back actions b) makes USSR play a scoring card at a bad time and c) is a defcon suicide card for the USSR after Fidel is played or any other mid-war battleground. Just an awful card. What were they thinking?

I will likely continue to play with the Turn zero part but not the extra cards or space race.

AA6 - Finished case 2! I actually ended up liking the case pretty well, even if it starts kind of weak. Lots of good PW humor with Apollo, Athena, Sahdmadhi, and the players in the case. I feel like the actual plot of the murder doesn’t make that much sense, but the killer is stylish and fun so who cares.

[NotMiki]

Nioh lets you respec 4 cheep so don't sweat stats and just try whatever weapons you want.  Other thoughts coming from the likes of DS3: Nioh enemies have short aggro ranges and stealth ninjutsu techs are very powerful.  Also, ranged headshots do ridiculous damage.  Sense Enemies is extremely strong (hard to come by early in the game unless you chose Isonade as your starting spirit, but it's a spirit shark so I assume you did.  Are you remembering to use Living Weapon?  I was constantly struggling to remember it.  May just be me tho.  Too much of a Dark Souls mindset to remember to go super saiyan.  Its activation gives you i-frames so it's great in many situations.

-Many DS gameplay habits translate here, in other ways it's doing its own thing. Main lesson is ki pulse all day every day, it should be automatic closure to the end of every attack sequence, running out of stamina here is a lot more likely to be fatal than it tends to be in DS. Also, at least from first boss, full run is often a more effective evasion strategy than trying to get perfect dodge timing down. Enemy attack tracking isn't as strong.

-I picked bird familiar.

-I mostly use Living Weapon for oni instead of actually learning how to fight them. I find this is hard to employ in any disciplined manner, which you kind of have to because you're not actually invincible while it's on, you just feel like you are, then you get hit and lose time from the meter. The temptation to spam attack is strong! Successful boss run didn't use it at all, meter wasn't full.

-The inventory bloat in this game gets totally insane, doesn't it.

I did not think the game was well served by diablo loot.  I wouldn't sweat it too too much for a while.  Late in the game there are rare affixes to really look out for.  Early, just be on the lookout for enemy/treasure/kodama sense.  Until you're very late in the game, weapon affixes matter way less than raw stats.  On the topic of loot, the gravestones of other players you can touch to fight an AI with their loadout?  Drop that player's weapon/armor at a high rate.  Very much worth your time.

So there are a trio of samurai skills, one per stance, that say they allow you to use ki pulses while dodging.  This is incorrect - they actually make it so that whenever you dodge you automatically ki pulse.  This is Good.  They are a shared skill that unlocks for every weapon type at once.

[Luther Lansfeld]

Oh, and in amusing notes for XCOM2 than only a couple people will find funny, my best character is named Carrie Price and is from Canada.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Fire Emblem Fates - Doing a Lunatic Conquest run, currently up to Chapter 19. It's pretty enjoyable, though on Classic it's brutally unforgiving. Every death is 100% your fault but there's a lot of stuff to remember and plan for. It's a lot like Hard - enemy stats aren't actually any higher - but with a few key extra enemies and extra skills which can make a big difference. Status staves are more common to punish overreliance on single units but at times that's still the way to go. Different formations are better handled with dual strikes or pair up, as usual, and different tanking builds are rewarded in different situations, too, which is nice. Not much to say, if you've played Fates you know how this works; I'm rather impressed that it keeps the basic fairness of the design.

Cosmic Star Heroine - Started this up. Has a very clear Chrono Trigger meets Phantasy Star 4 feel. The game feels a little less open with its information than past Zeboyd titles but still seems like it has pretty enjoyable gameplay so far.


I also finished Invisible Inc and Fire Emblem Warriors (well, FEW isn't finished as such, but I feel like I've done enough at least for now), I'll probably say more about them with my year-end reviews at this point.

[Sierra]

Nioh lets you respec 4 cheep so don't sweat stats and just try whatever weapons you want.  Other thoughts coming from the likes of DS3: Nioh enemies have short aggro ranges and stealth ninjutsu techs are very powerful.  Also, ranged headshots do ridiculous damage.  Sense Enemies is extremely strong (hard to come by early in the game unless you chose Isonade as your starting spirit, but it's a spirit shark so I assume you did.  Are you remembering to use Living Weapon?  I was constantly struggling to remember it.  May just be me tho.  Too much of a Dark Souls mindset to remember to go super saiyan.  Its activation gives you i-frames so it's great in many situations.

-Many DS gameplay habits translate here, in other ways it's doing its own thing. Main lesson is ki pulse all day every day, it should be automatic closure to the end of every attack sequence, running out of stamina here is a lot more likely to be fatal than it tends to be in DS. Also, at least from first boss, full run is often a more effective evasion strategy than trying to get perfect dodge timing down. Enemy attack tracking isn't as strong.

-I picked bird familiar.

-I mostly use Living Weapon for oni instead of actually learning how to fight them. I find this is hard to employ in any disciplined manner, which you kind of have to because you're not actually invincible while it's on, you just feel like you are, then you get hit and lose time from the meter. The temptation to spam attack is strong! Successful boss run didn't use it at all, meter wasn't full.

-The inventory bloat in this game gets totally insane, doesn't it.

I did not think the game was well served by diablo loot.  I wouldn't sweat it too too much for a while.  Late in the game there are rare affixes to really look out for.  Early, just be on the lookout for enemy/treasure/kodama sense.  Until you're very late in the game, weapon affixes matter way less than raw stats.  On the topic of loot, the gravestones of other players you can touch to fight an AI with their loadout?  Drop that player's weapon/armor at a high rate.  Very much worth your time.

So there are a trio of samurai skills, one per stance, that say they allow you to use ki pulses while dodging.  This is incorrect - they actually make it so that whenever you dodge you automatically ki pulse.  This is Good.  They are a shared skill that unlocks for every weapon type at once.

That's awesome, because there are times when the window between Player Attack -> Enemy Response is just a little too narrow to get off both a ki pulse and a dodge, with occasionally lamentable results. I'm getting the general impression that low stance is the hit-and-run mode, middle stance is the standard good-for-blocking mode, and high stance is just SMASH (and maximum reach on kusarigama, which is golden). I also don't fight many revenants--tried a couple in the first mission, didn't get a ton out of it, second one almost massacred me, now not taking risks unless I guess maybe they're really close to a shrine.

"That wall is looking at you funny," says the cat-clock (even William calls him this). Okay, good info. But could you have maybe also been more clear and stated "Wall will smash the fuck out of you if you poke it?" The second story mission was owning me so badly that I had to bail and go do the bandit side mission instead.

[NotMiki]

Your assessment of stances is pretty much correct.  For kusarigama, though, the attacks are unique enough that it's mostly "what specific attack do I want to use."  High strong/weak, Mid weak, Low strong all have unique applications, and if you stick with that weapon you'll need to get the hang of mid-combat stance changes to get the most out of it.  When I played I didn't get a ton of use out of the advanced skills you can learn (other than passives and the skill that allows you to trip an enemy with the high/strong attack).

Btw, not sure if it's even an option for you yet, but it's not really all that clear so: ninja/onmyo skills that give you consumable items, when you get a second or third level of the skill you can equip the skill multiple times so you have a larger stock of them (so equip horoku-dama up to 3 times for 6 bombs, etc)

[Sierra]

That isn't an option yet, but item spam is pretty much how I beat bat girl, so good to know.

[Meeplelard]

FF15 Episode Ignis: Completed both paths.  I actually appreciate the "What if" storyline being a far superior outcome to the canonical one, since it is nice to establish that things COULD have been better.  FF15's ending was fine and had a bitter-sweet ending, but the alt ending is basically "Heroes win, PERIOD."  Normally alt endings have some kind of catch to them but no, this was "Heroes win, several people who should have died survive, and everyone is actually happy."

The 3 character DLCs were nice.  Gladio's didn't really do a whole lot other than give us some back story for Cor and explain why Gladio went missing, Prompto's did finally establish some key things because Prompto has this character reveal completely off screen otherwise and it's resolved as fast as it is covered, so he really needed that arc (and it was nice to see more of Aranea too), and Ignis...holy shit. 

Also, they addressed probably one of the biggest Non-Chapter 14 story criticisms in FF15 in Episode Ignis by actually having Ravus be a big part of it, because there was a character who was seemingly important OOOPS, he's gone, we dropped him.  Why?  ...because we ran out of time.  I say Non-Chapter 14 because Chapter 14 still feels like it's from a different game (Probably why they had a time skip @_@ )...and in many ways it is, because it's all the v13 stuff they didn't have a chance to remove/repurpose. 

Also, toyed around with character swapping main-game.  Neat how they actually just took the combat systems of the 3 Episodes, and shoved them into the main game, with a repurposed UI to make everyone look like they're from the gameplay.

[NotMiki]

Many moons ago I beat Bloodborne.  I liked it a lot.  I wrote a review of it.  The review was long and rambly so I didn't post it despite Laggy pestering me to.  Um now it's like 8 months later, so here goes.

Bloodborne:

Bloodborne is a staggering success, both as a game and as a work of art.  I like it so much that it's hard to talk about it in anything but superlatives, but I'll try.

Comparisons to Dark Souls are inevitable, so let's just jump right into that.  In Dark Souls, the game is content to have its plot unfold almost entirely environmentally, and the game rewards attention to detail and rumination over the meaning of it all.  Bloodborne is similar on both counts.  Quite unlike DS, though, everything is connected in Bloodborne.  The threads can be tied together.  You can figure Bloodborne out.  It's discrete.  The majority of questions you will have can be answered.  And it's glorious.  I hope future From games operate at this level of specificity.  Dark Souls didn't and was better vague, but that's a trick that works best the first time (ok, works best the second time, because Demon's Souls is a mess. but you know what I mean.)

So what's it like to actually, y'know, play the game?  Combat is awesome, but I don't have a lot to say about it.  It's Dark Souls but faster and you can't block and you're encouraged to be aggressive and trade hits.  Works really, really well in practice.  Exploration in this game is special, even compared to the likes of Dark Souls.  The tension is admirable and organic.  You don't want to die and lose the souls you've collected, and on your first time through an area you especially don't want to die, because if you can clear out an entire area of enemies, you can relax a bit and take the time to understand where you are, to get elusive loot in the distance (have I mentioned what a fantastic design decision it is for loot to be easily visible from far away?).  The game is designed with this in mind, with enemies positioned to get the drop on you if you're not careful, and with occasional traps to make you paranoid (no mimics though! open all the treasure chests you want!)  When I first was exploring the Forbidden Woods - a remarkably difficult, twisting environment it's impossible not to get lost in - I had fought through what I thought was a mostly distinct area.  I was fat with souls blood echoes and I stopped, to think about what to do next.  Press on?  Try to build on what I'd done so far? or go back.  I thought to myself, "I shouldn't take one more step forward" and thought about it for a minute, worked up my courage and took a single step forward.  Triggering a log trap that knocked me on my ass and wiped out 80% of my health.  You have never seen someone teleport their ass out of a zone faster than I did.  Awesome.  This is a bit silly, because if you think about it logically, you lose very little by dying.  You keep whatever loot you found, you don't lose any Insight (the Bloodborne equivalent of Humanity).  All you lose is the blood echoes you've accumulated and the enemies you've slain.  As an aside, traps in this game feel very fair - that log trap was identical to one that you'll probably trigger right after the save point at the entrance of the area where you lose essentially nothing even if you die - so if I'd been more observant of what the trigger looked like the first time around, I could have avoided the second.

Something that feeds into that in a big way is the game's sound design.  So enemies jump out at you a lot, and you get paranoid that they're around every corner, or that corpse is going to rise up and attack you from behind, etc.  Because you're always on alert, you're always listening for sound cues that you're about to get ambushed.  Bloodborne sound is filled with false positives, and you're hearing them all the time.  How close is the source of that voice?  That growl?  Something's out there, and it wants to kill me.  Where is it??  Where is it???  It's great, and I would be convinced it's unintentional except that Dark Souls 3 isn't like that at all.

for all the frenetic combat and "oh shit" moments, though, I found the overall Bloodborne experience to be, at its base, slow and contemplative.  The heart of the game is in the quiet moments where you step back and try to make sense of what you have seen and heard, take all the pieces of information you have gathered about the world, and sort out just what you think is going on.  Dark Souls felt fundamentally the same, but the Dark Souls was apparently modeled after the Norse eddas, works that give an impression of a world of gods and men but are tantalizing and incomplete.  So it was a wide-ranging, fundamentally ambiguous story.  Bloodborne is much more focused and condense.  In this game, everything connects, the contours of the plot fit together, so that if you take the time (and look up some stuff you missed) you can see the whole take form.  Certainly there are unanswered questions, but broadly, you know what happened, you know the players, you can learn how they interacted, and you may come to know why.

Some of the most fascinating bits, though, are quite well hidden.  Eileen the Crow's questline has perhaps the best-hid and most fascinating bit of dialogue in the game.  If you help her survive Henryk but anger her by hitting her too much (or maybe by waiting too long to do the final leg of her quest - not sure) you end up fighting her in the cathedral.  If you do, and if she kills you, she says this: "You still have dreams? Tell the little doll I said hello..."  In just those few words she's telling you she knows about the Hunter's Dream, probably resided there in the past (and other dialogue of hers confirms this) and somehow escaped from it.  She's also confirming the fundamental nature of the game.  The player dies, the player returns to the dream, the player sets out once again.  Well Bloodborne's a video game, so of course when you die you come back.  Eileen is telling you that that video game mechanic is known by denizens of the game, and understood, at least, by her.  Bloodborne is about as immersive a game as I have played, and that little line, tucked into an unlikely scenario, is the best example of why.

Also: the game has a sense of humor!  Deadpan, understated in the extreme, and funnier for it.  My favorite bits are these:

So when you start Bloodborne the first thing that probably happens is you run into a werewolf and try to fight it and die a quick and bloody death.  As possibly a joke on the most efficient way to play a DS game, you can ALSO just...run right by the werewolf. it's entirely optional.

There's a school auditorium with a bunch of spectres of dead(?) students.  It's a good place for farming exp so you probably go there multiple times.  You may notice that there's one dude that just does not aggro with the same range as the rest of them. you have to be right on top of him.  Fucker's sleeping through class YOU'RE PROBABLY NOT EVEN ALIVE SHOW SOME GUMPTION.  Like, who takes the time to program that?

Not to say the game isn't without flaws.

Father Gascoigne is too damn hard.  He's the first mandatory boss of the game, and he is a motherfucker.  Probably the most difficult mandatory boss, though there are (wrong) dissenting opinions about that.  He alone makes the game a bit hard to recommend to anyone and everyone.  Dark Souls, for all the talk of it being a diffiicult game, has nothing so hard so early. He's a true bottleneck to boot, and the runback to him is long.

The camera for boss fights with large enemies is awful. <= I originally wrote this sentence before fighting the headless version of Bloodletting Beast.  That may be the worst camera in Fromsoft history.

There's an optional quest line and the second part of it you only get a single chance to get right, and it's fucking hard.

There was no need to make healing items and bullets consumable resources, and running out of them is a real hassle.

The game's weapon balance is really good - you can use starting weapons for the entire game if you want.  And the movesets on weapons are great and varied.  The gripe: a lot of them come very late.  And good dex weapons come late.  Also if you are a crazy person and try to get that one bloodtinge weapon as early as you can you're gonna have a bad time.  But no one would be so foolish.  Also, there are very few weapons with natural elemental damage, so if you want fire or lightning damage (and you frequently do) it's a bit of a hassle.

Here is one other random and extremely cool thing I couldn't fit in anywhere else: Gascoigne's music box plays the same tune as the boss music for Mergo's Wet Nurse.  Damned if I know what the exact implications of that are, but it's true.

tl;dr play Bloodborne

[DjinnAndTonic]

Final Fantasy Dimensions 2:

This game keeps surprising me. It's actually doing a time-travel plot that doesn't suck. Without the gacha bullshit, this game manages to be genuinely fun, despite having all the aesthetics of a mobile cashgrab. I really hope it does well enough that it inspires Square Enix to release its other F2P offerings as a normal game, excised of microtransactions.

[DragonKnight Zero]

Gifted a game for the holidays so now I have words about:

Mega Man Anniversary Collection

I already have 4 of the games but it is convenient to not need to dig out the console to play them on.  Sometimes even remember to use the real-time weapon switching.  There is no announcement when secrets are unlocked.  The autosaves only store what a password would.

Mega Man:

  It does save which robot masters have been defeated.  Wily stages need to be taken out in one sitting which is quite the challenge.  Died twice getting to Gutsman, beat Cutman, got to Elecman's door with one unit of life on my last life.  It would have been a total clutch moment had I managed to beat him but I got to close to a zapper and died without reaching him.  On next attempt, died once when I tried for the trick strat and failed. 

     Next game over was on Wily 3.  I beat the yellow devil honestly for the first time ever.  Did try the pause trick but the game would have none of that so pushed into do or die.  Wily 2 had one death on Elecman redux but otherwise a successful outing with smart special weapon usage.  Flubbed Wily 3 boss because I wasn't paying attention to my life meter.  After game overing, won after another death there.  Wily 4 is the other wall.  Four bosses in a row and no pause trick to use as a crutch.  I can handle Bombman and Iceman without damage most of the time.  Fireman, I suck at and end up eating 2-3 hits.  Had quite a few attempts get to Gutsman with a near empty energy meter.  And the first time I make it past that gauntlet, I'm on my last life with 30% energy so the Wily machine has an easy kill.

     Wily machine 1 falls fast to Fire Storm.  Still worth making the effort to dodge the shots since the following form is trickier.  I work out that form 2 aims it's circling shots at my position but still lose several times trying to work out a consistent way to dodge them.  Seems walking towards Wily when he's about to shoot works best for me.  I use Rolling Cutter for offense since all weapons that can hit do 1 damage and it's best for landing multiple hits per shot.  Success, wow this was hard.

     Look up strats on GameFAQs after winning and most of the ones I scout advocate the pause trick.  Well dang, that's not really helpful here.

Mega Man 2:

     Used a password to go straight to Wily since I just want the unlocks.  Repeatedly pausing to phase through projectiles no longer appears to work.  In fact, i find it detrimental to pause at a bad time as Megaman is a sitting duck for a few frames when unpausing and I end up getting smacked by the shot I was trying to evade.  Crash Bombs appear to have a slightly different explosion range.  One bomb takes out two walls if they're right next to each other which I don't recall being the case in the NES game.

     Was worried about messing up at the dragon but nailed it first try.  Did poorly at Wily 2 boss, using 2 E-tanks.  Spiky death got me once in Wily 3. 

  First trip through Wily 4, I get to the boss with 2 units of energy so just try to take out barriers before dying.  The first moving platform room is an easy place to farm for weapon energy.  Stand on ladder, Metal Blade anything that spawn above, and let enemies from the right hole drift towards you.  When one reaches solid ground, shoot with buster.  They all come from the right side if shot one at a time so it's easy to refill whatever is needed.

  At the boss, I try the trick shot to take out a barrier and a cannon at the same time but miss it.  At some point, I reach for an E-tank and wait a sec...?  Did the game really remove my E-tanks on death?  Oh that's just cruel.  How did it happen since I started with 4, use 2, and pick up the next 2?   I do barely beat the boss but now the next stage looks hopeless.  This is not helped by getting hit at the wrong time at Woodman and whiffing a charged Atomic Fire in the wrong direction.  Wily machine destroys me.  Continue after losing remaining lives.  Mess up with Atomic Fire at Woodman again.  Wily machine is dealt with buster for the first form as I can consistently dodge its shots.  Second form I use Crash Bombs and it's a damage race.  Was a relief to win that one.

  Last stage.  Turns out running to the right only works if one is holding right for most of the fall.  This is much faster than carefully dodging acid drips only to die at the boss and do it all over.  I'm already at 0 E-tanks, a few more deaths won't set me back too much.  Well, I would only take one shot at a time and pause to reload so I didn't consume weapon energy.  Needed to time pausing well to not get smacked by a bullet coming out of the menu.  Pull it together eventually and another game down.

     

[Sierra]

Pulling out a few points from Jimpost to respond to:

Father Gascoigne is too damn hard.

The camera for boss fights with large enemies is awful. <= I originally wrote this sentence before fighting the headless version of Bloodletting Beast.  That may be the worst camera in Fromsoft history.

There's an optional quest line and the second part of it you only get a single chance to get right, and it's fucking hard.

There was no need to make healing items and bullets consumable resources, and running out of them is a real hassle.

The game's weapon balance is really good - you can use starting weapons for the entire game if you want.  And the movesets on weapons are great and varied.  The gripe: a lot of them come very late.  And good dex weapons come late.  Also if you are a crazy person and try to get that one bloodtinge weapon as early as you can you're gonna have a bad time.  But no one would be so foolish.  Also, there are very few weapons with natural elemental damage, so if you want fire or lightning damage (and you frequently do) it's a bit of a hassle.

-Beat Pops G on the first try. I have no idea how. My nerves were destroyed afterward. I was literally shaking and had to stop playing for the night. He's maybe too hard for a first boss. Definitely not too hard for the game, though. (I'm looking your way here, Orphan.)

-First it seems like Cleric Beast would have to be the worst camera, then you realize, no, it has to be Darkbeast Paarl, and then...then you meet Headless. It isn't a coincidence that Bloodborne's best bosses tend to be on a more human scale.

-Which quest is this? EDIT: OH, duh. Eileen. Chuck a bunch of poison knives at Henryk before Eileen arrives, then range him down so you don't hit her by mistake. Should consistently be able to wear him down before he kills her.

-Going back to Demon's's's's's Souls healing was awful after From had already found a better way to handle it in Dark Souls. This was my #1 complaint when I first played Bloodborne. Running out of resources wasn't an issue on replays, but the mere possibility of having to stop between boss runs to farm up more supplies grated on me hard first time through.

-Fighting Logy ASAP for blood katana is indeed the supreme bad time. As noted, it's also very difficult to make anything like a functional arcane build anywhere in the first half of the game. Making either approach functional reasonably early basically equals a challenge run as you do things out of usual order.

~

Nioh: cleared the first region of the game. Dropped some money on respeccing because I have tons of money and nothing else to do with it. Mostly just wanted to reallocate a few dead levels that I'd dumped early on stuff I realized I didn't need (for some reason I assumed that Body was the HP stat, probably because it's at the top of the list and Souls instincts die hard). Afterward I discover, oh wait, armor has stat requirements for those passive abilities and I don't meet them anymore. Oh well, the reqs are fairly low, it's just a couple levels to make those work again. I've put in enough time at this point to be pretty clear on what types of weapons I like just based on moveset and to have an overall build direction. My priorities right now are basically this:

-Dexterity because kunai are the only way I know how to deal with anything difficult (also powers up kusarigama)
-Whatever bare minimum of Spirit will unlock all the passive traits for whatever familiars I have
-Minor in Magic to try out Onmyo stuff
-Heart for more ki + scaling for swords (and I guess bows are a bonus)

Was going to take some Stamina too for more carry weight, but that looks like kind of a waste now since I'm unlikely to be using much heavy armor--as with Souls games, I prefer to dress light and dodge more (I mostly just run around in the ninja outfit). The Raikiri I got from the last story mission is stupidly good and I've discovered I like the single sword moveset a lot*, so likely maining that + kusarigama. (*EDIT: the attack + automatically backstep at the end of a combo skill is amazingly good.)

Boss death tally for the first area:

-I'm the [Tutorial] Boss: 0 because plot kill
-Big Balls: 7-8
-Batgirl: 4-5
-Derpface dog: 1
-I Think I'm a Clone Now: 3-4
-The real Tachibana stands up: 8-10

Latter was dealt with 100% through ranged damage (had to burn a couple Shinobi Boxes to have enough firepower). Despite almost being the same fight as the dungeon before him, I couldn't deal with this at all. He'd almost always kill me in one hit and the arena gave you even less cover. So I ran away a lot and threw all the kunai in the world, never tried a single melee attack, and got the title for beating him without damage. Honorable samurai strats! This is basically my approach for most things where it isn't immediately obvious how to deal with it close range. Storm kunai too good vs. fatties.

Going to put this on the shelf a bit and finish Nier: Automata before really getting sucked in, because wow that is definitely going to happen if I keep going, but some general observations so far:

-Story missions are looooong. There's not an interconnected game world like in Souls games, but you can tell they took a lot of level design lessons from Souls games.
-One thing I'm glad to see not carried over from Souls games: WEAPON DURABILITY.
-Also nice: NO JUMPING PHYSICS. Seriously. And if you have to drop down to an imposingly narrow ledge to grab an item, the game's pretty generous about subtly tugging you onto a safe landing spot if you're at least somewhat on target.
-Tried some co-op to see how it worked here. I haven't tried summoning dudes, and probably not gonna because being on the other side of that equation it seems like it would make things way too easy, but working as a guest: seems nice that you have some capacity to rescue each other, and as a guest, you get healing items refreshed when the host finds a shrine. Flipside, your consumables don't refresh, so there's still something you have to think about rationing out during the course of a level; alternately, the other guest option lets you refresh your skills but not your healing items--which is fair since enemies will drop healing items, though flipside as phantom is there's no rescue if anyone dies. Interesting way to balance it. Other Dudes remain totally OP vs. bosses, but I guess that's going to be the case in every game like this.
-Kappa are just the worst. The worst!

Shaping up to be a solidly recommendable action game.