What Games Are You Playing: 2008

[hinode]

Grefter: I didn't say that Disgaea had quality plot per se, but rather that the plot's a vehicle for the cast of characters, who are well liked in general (even by Elfboy, who hates the game otherwise) - net result is that the plot scenes are enjoyable even if tropetastic.

Also, my favorite example of "completely non-intuitive pathsplit" comes from Tactics Ogre: Knight of Lodis:

Cybil: "Weren't you listening? If we capture a mermaid and wound
       her, she'll call for help. Then we'll follow them to the
       leader."

Alphonse: "Hold on...I'm not so sure about this. The mermaids
          have nothing to do with your treasure hunting. How
          can we use them like that?"

Cybil: "Then tell me, Alphonse, what should we do? The sea is
       endless. We are powerless to it. We need a practical
       solution, and that's the best idea we've got. Save your
       sympathy, unless you can thnk of another way. Otherwise,
       follow my orders."

Alphonse: A: "I've no better ideas..."
          B: "It doesn't seem right."

Alphonse (A): "I don't have a better idea, but still...I can't
              agree to that."

Cybil: "Then find another way. If you get the information on your
       own before it reaches the enemy, then your debt to me will
       be repaid, and I will release you from my service."

Alphonse: "Alright. I promise you that I'll return with the
          information you seek."

Alphonse (B): "...It doesn't seem right. I won't obey you anymore.
              You never explain yourself, and I'm tired of
              listening without question. I'm not your puppet.
              However, I will repay my debt to you. I'll find the
              sanctuary on my own and return with details on the
              spear."

Cybil: "Alright. I'll trust you. But, there's on time to waste.
       Got it?"

Alphonse: "Yes...and afterwards......we part company."

How the heck is anyone supposed to tell that the choice here even makes a meaningful difference, let alone that it's the one major pathsplit in the game, without a faq?

[Shale]

Front Mission 3 also wants a word with you.

[superaielman]

RS's path split is entirely interesting for the effects on Jack (To a lesser extent, Cross and other minor characters). Human path is so very, very bad, fairy path is tolerable overall.

[Taishyr]

FFTA2: I picked this up for some reason, yes. It's... actually not bad. Yeah, I'm pretty surprised myself.

GOOD: Bangaas got de-nerfed. Their speed's now pretty much average, and they still pretty much are the phys damage/wind damage gods thus far.

Generally, the battles feel more interesting, monsters have semi-varied skillsets (in that one may have a Haste ability, while another can Charm, despite being the same kind of monster), and objectives are more varied (Kill precisely four Malboro from a stream of constant enemies, find the random item on the ground (they give you places to search) while fighting off a small group of enemies, WALK INTO TRAPS MISSIONS, suchlike) and there is a noticeable dearth of missions you are -forced- to send people out on. You can choose to! But it's rarely forced; I've had all of one mission do so thus far, and it was just one person. Fairly cool setup.

Character balance feels better, though humans suck a bit more than I thought they would. They're still not bad, but... offense feels bad off anyone not Luso/Potato. One downside is that having healing on two or more people isn't just a good idea, it's quasi-needed; one person just can't keep up too well. Mages feel worse overall in this, as well, due to starting at 0 MP and getting 10 MP a turn; while it's nice regen for cheap spells, it makes it harder to use more powerful spells.

The law system has gone from absolutely goddamn annoying to not really too noticeable except on some of the more bizarre laws. Firstly, laws were toned down to "can't revive in-battle if you break them", which is far better (you also lose part of the end-battle rewards, but they usually aren't that good anyway). Secondly, the most annoying laws (thus far) are laws against missing and knockback, since criticals are decently common and cause knockback. Overall that changed for the better, since losing out on a piece of equipment (rarely good) and a loot item (usually useful) isn't too big of a deal.

Equipment's made by combining three loot items, gotten after quests/via stealing/one per kill. I don't think you can steal equipment anymore, but stealing loot items allows you to make your own, so eh. The system seems a bit too random for me, but it's not hard since you get a lot of loot items.

Finally, the main character is far better than FFTA's cast combined. Just sayin'.

Pretty much, it's what FFTA should have been thus far. Tenative 6 or 7.

Edit: Oh, and the main character is a Bangaa with human job selection, it seems. This is actually a winning trade, since Human magic classes aren't too impressive still.

[Idun]

Just got to Frontier Town Halim. I'm roughly 37 hours in WA4, but a good 6 hours is from letting the game idle since I went out instead of saving and turning off the console. I pick and choose the dialog I read. Pretty much the only interesting stuff is between Raquel and Arnaud, or anything that involves Gawn. Can't wait til the game is over. This means I might be able to move foward in FF12! But I'll give the games a break for the rest of the month for school after I beat WA4.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Ultimately Fallout doesn't really have a path split and THAT is what makes the evil path good, it is just a chain of various events that you can explot to your own benefit in various ways and well it is kind of evil if you do them all.  Arcanum is similar, but there is an actual path split and it does effect how you ultimately get to the end, but by the time you hit the end of the game the path split isn't the key deciding factor in the plot, it is again, just a way of characterising your journey.  Both of these stand out as exceptional with doing this because they aren't meaningless choices (Like say Deus Ex: Invisible War "path split").

So yeah that is why Fallout did it well, Arcanum did it very well.  Torment handles it a bit more like Fallout than Torment just for reference (Torment is about Mortality not Morality though).

It wasn't actually a dig at Soul Nomad, it was just well yeah I don't consider the two things you are comparing it to as very good gauges for how good you mean it is >_>  I am going to go out on a limb and assume it is infinitely better than Disgaeas stupid "Did you ever kill one of your units? No, good ending, yes bad ending.  Did you kill a stupid number of them?  Yes, even worse ending." which has like zero warning in game and has fairly big diversion in how huge a dick the final boss in the game is.

Edit 2 also - I cannot stress how bad the good/evil business in Fable is.  It is just like... the bottom of the barrel.  It is nothing but a cosmetic choice.

Edit 3 - Oh yeah also worth noting the near meaningless path with binary ending choices is fairly commonly becoming the way this stuff is working in games that have it these days with varying degrees of suckiness.  It is certainly a trap otherwise good games can easilly fall into.  It is pretty far from making or breaking a game, it just harms the credability of the plot is all.



Disgaea sounds like it does a better job at it than it really does hinode.  It is just trading some RPG tropes for more Anime tropes.  Milage varies in it, but hey, Originality isn't really rating high up there.  It has some interesting concepts it could play with ones that SMT brings up more frequently and cock teases with dealing with a lot more (Humanising demons and whatnot), but it doesn't really follow through.  Mostly for the opposite reasons as SMT though.  Disgaea demons are functionally just (shallow) humans, they are incredibly lacking in any truely disturbing demonic aspects to go with their human aspects (Where SMT just you know stops having plot at that point).

I wasn't considering having the same game with 2 different endings as 'splitpath'. Thus, Disgaea shouldn't even figure into this conversation. And the ending for killing one ally in Disgaea is just a 'normal ending', which is overall a fairly happy ending, but isn't the deliriously perfect ending you get for never killing one of your friends. Seems like the 'good ending' was more of a replay thing anyway.

I completely agree with you on Fable and Radiata Stories as inept splitpaths, but they were clearly splitpath games. Soul Nomad is also two very different games depending on whether you choose Good Path or Demon Path. Demon Path is clearly labeled and is recommended as something for the second-playthrough in-game. The sadism of the characters in the Demon Path is pretty apparent and no one is expecting a happy ending (though you can get one by losing the final battle when you're evil!). There's a few scenes in particular that are pretty gutsy for an N1 game, and certainly not family-friendly. It's also fun to watch characters that were important PCs in the Good Path go catatonic in the Demon Path.

The Good Path has a few nice surprises as well. I remember when the game was first making its way around the group, it's big twist was lauded as interesting or at least, surprising, by even the N1 detractors.

This isn't to say that Grefter will suddenly enjoy N1 game mechanics, but I definitely think the more-serious story is more Grefter-friendly than previous N1 installments.

-Djinn

[Luther Lansfeld]

FM3 is ridiculous "DO YOU WANT TO GO TO THE BASE Y/N". I remember reading about there being a pathsplit in FM3 and I waited and waited for it. <_<

[Monkeyfinger]

If it means anything coming from someone who has played all those WRPGs: Soul Nomad uses a pretty standard way of splitting up good/evil paths, but the story and writing quality of its evil path is better than anything in those WRPGs. (There is the problem that gameplaywise, SN's evil path plays like an itemlized list of everything bad N1 can do, but that's a separate issue.)

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Lies, MF. Lies.

So, speaking of pathing, Fallout 3: Once again, no split pathing. You know what I like about the "evil" path in FO3? It makes sense. You're not this infantile asshole. The evil path is the "money above everything else. Extort them like a motherfucker" path. You do anything for money, and backstab people without hesitation if you think it'll get you ahead.

This does not put you on an entirely different gameplay track. Your objectives are still the same, your priorities are different.

I just killed a lesbian Ghoul for a bartender so he would give me his combat shotgun-toting bouncer slave, and then immediately turned around and let the bouncer kill him (it was HIS idea) so that I could loot his body for the supply room key.

[Fudozukushi]

Suikoden V: Huh, money isn't up to the levels I was gaining on playthrough 2.  I'm seriously thinking that I had two Prosperity runes equipped since it's the only explanation I can think of.

[DomaDragoon]

Fallout 3: Been a while since I updated, and I've spent most of that time playing (up to 33 hours), so here we go. When we last left our intrepid do-gooder, I had just acquired my own home and storage space for all my stuff. Returning to Bloody Glitch, I rank up to 16 (Adamantim Skeleton, Intense Training (Luck), Tag! (Sneak - had forgotten to bring it up before and it's the 20 prereq) before deciding to actually progress something. Not the story - it's sidequest time!  And because I have no idea in what order I did these, I'll just give a rough estimate (read: write it in order on the Fallout Wiki):

Moira Brown's Declassified Wasteland Survival Guide, Part the First: Common Sense That You Should Know
1. Drinking toilet water is bad and leads to worthless perks.
2. Don't go to the Super-Duper Mart. It's a breeding ground for Talon, raiders, and I stole everything already.
3. Land mines explode. So do snipers when you smack'em with a Shishkabob to the head.

Moira's Guide to the Galaxy, Part the Second: Help Control The Pet Population
1. Exploding rat heads is cool.
2. Not hitting Mirelurks is also cool, but even more cool when you go back and then make them explode.
3. The Vault 101 Dude is NOT good at parkour.

The Girl Guide's Pledge, Part the Third: Those Who Fail History Have To Take Summer School
1. Rivet City was founded by some old scientist surgeon dude who enjoys all his visitors to take a many-reset filled swim.
2. Robot = ZAP!
3. The lack of a whole pile of skill books disappoints me in Arlington Library. PS: Attention, Myron. Your copy of West Side Story: The Novelization is overdue.
Go for strength for bonus, so add +6 to DR. Booyaka.

Oh God Why Are The Ants Breathing Fire?!: Went good guy, hot ant DNA stuck in my eyes. Yum. Pawned little Harry off on his Muggle ant, er, aunt.

Total Recall: Got a rifle, wired reflexes, and two dead Commonwealthers. You figure it out.

Castlevania: Train Station of Tempo: Convinced them to go merc. Delivered a letter. Decided if I ever see Bittercup again, I'mma gonna knock her in the head and pull her here.

Looting Priceless Documents For Fun and Profit Part 1 - We The People: Lacked enough skill to get a key to this place, and idiot temp PC ran into a firefight and dropped dead. Failed speech, so got a forgery as good as the original. Hope there isn't a whole pile of great stuff in the archive.

Looting Priceless Documents For Fun and Profit Part 2 - The Play's The Thing: Ended my game as I was about to give a bunch of stuff (but not the gun. My gun. Mine.) out. Guy seems kind of seedy, so I'm not sure if I'm going to give away my swag.

The Main Game -  Power Armor, Power Armor, Sys-boom-bah!: After stumbling around for a while, I finally reach GNR and meet the BoS. Hey guyz, can i haz pwr armr? What's that, dead bodies? Yoink! But I can't use it... yet. I also find a Fat Man. Stupid cracks about my weight... um, did anyone else just feel the earth move?

Not that way, you sickos.

My, what big green muscles you have Grandma. "The better to smash you with, li-" Abehemothwhogetsanuketothefacesayswhat. "What?" Exactly.

I meet Three Dog. I have to reset four times because my finger "slips" in VATS mode as I have a Combat Shotgun aimed at his face. Go and do his thing after a trip to Rivet City, get a key of unlocking. Find out that my old man is going to some place that's named very suspiciously like the Final Solution. Don't be going bad on me, Dad.

Also, I found another Behemoth locked up in an electric cage. I push the button (Frank) with a rocket launcher to open it up, then Nuke'em.

Additional perks are 3 to Intense Training (Luck + Agility), and I'm a ninja. Yay me!

[Grefter]

Fallout 3 has the shockingly bad Elderscrolls stealing mechanics on that though Rob. OH MY GOD YOU STOLE THESE ITEMS FROM THE PERSON IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE WHO ATTACKED YOU.  EVIL, EVIL MAN.  So it isn't great on the list of things that are great for having complex and detailed morality.  Rest of the game does look really alright though.

Hinode, was more just saying Disgaea mostly just dodges standard fantasy tropes for a fist full of other anime tropes, doesn't mean it is bad plot (Well it is when it is being serious, but that is beside the point.  It CAN be funny).

Ultimately though, a standard path split with good writing is fine.  There may be better more elegant ways to do divergant plot than split path, but it is just one element of a game.  So what you are describing of the writing there Monkey does corroborate what Djinn is saying fairly well.  If it weren't N1 I would probably check it out.  I will not play another N1 game that I can't cheat to hell and back though.

[Captain K.]

BvS:  Got some Boots of Walking.  Hells yeah.

Ninjatown:  It's a RTS kind of game (supposedly it's very similar to Tower Defense from WC3).  I don't generally enjoy these types of games, and this one hasn't wowed me thus far.  It is, however, ridiculously cute.  Currently in the Dark Forest stages.  No idea why I got an E rank on the last map of the Business stage despite not taking any damage.

Spore:  Started.  Cell stage is amusing, Creature stage is great, and then you get to the Tribal Stage, which sucks massive ass.  Did I mention I don't like RTSes?  Yeah, and Tribal is a particularly bad one.  Having said that, the creature designing is great, and the game does an amazing job of animating any crazy thing you come up with properly.  Is anyone else playing this that wants to trade Sporecasts?

[Niu]

VPDS- Ahly: SHUYAKU WO YOKOSEEEE~~~~
Ah, Seraphic Gate is just too fun. Ahly you poor poor thing.

[AndrewRogue]

World of Warcraft: Hunting for a Disgusting Oozling. Success thus far: 0%. I sense I'm in for a long haul.

Dead Space: I hate no oxygen sequences.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

G3 - Finally back to this now that I have a copy that doesn't fail like Sailor Man-Meeplina HD pantyshots. Just started Melc Ruins - Melc Crystals were a fun as hell if tense fight. Plot continues to be jarring. I mean, cutting yourself as a kid, Emolicious? Literally? Christ.

[Meeplelard]

Liquid that gives life protruding from eyes in such a way that indicates pain: Just got past the BIG REVEAL! scene...

...which actually had a few neat twists, for all that one of them I found annoying cause it pulled such a BS cliche that the game before now seemed like it might actually avoid (not that the twist didn't make sense, but...)

Believe it or not, this game has decent plot when it actually tries.  The issue? There's way too much game play in between everything <_<;

[Grefter]

Melc Crystals is probably the best fight in the game Snow, so hope you liked it.  Nothing else really puts up quite as much fight as they did.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Oh, the Melc Crystals fight was very fun. G3 is good at doing that, though.

Speaking of which!

G3 - Emolicious and Emolicious groupie beaten! Once again, fairly fun fights, although Violetta was a bit on the easy side (she killed Ulf once, but that's because I let her charge an Erebos when she was nearly dead, no biggie). Emelious was pretty good, although I never saw Shadow Warrior. On the other hand, with that freaking evade, does he even need it?

Well, there was a rofl lolim somewhere in the middle, but who cares.

EDIT: PLOTWISE, this is the symbolism behind the Raven/Emelious fight: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FGk63Fv7t4

[AAA]

GTA4-Doing missions for Elizabeta. 73/200 pigeons(all pigeons that are on the first island). Nabbing the one on the control tower of the airport got me the Walk Free achievement. I guess I'll start on second island shit whenever I get bored of the current mission strand. Speaking of which, the reveal with Michelle caught me off guard, but in retrospect makes perfect sense. Still having a lot of fun with the game.

edit-All Most Wanted missions done for the second island. Failed races 3 times due to car flippage. Think I'll give a motorcycle run a shot.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Fallout 3 has the shockingly bad Elderscrolls stealing mechanics on that though Rob. OH MY GOD YOU STOLE THESE ITEMS FROM THE PERSON IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE WHO ATTACKED YOU.  EVIL, EVIL MAN.  So it isn't great on the list of things that are great for having complex and detailed morality.  Rest of the game does look really alright though.

Hinode, was more just saying Disgaea mostly just dodges standard fantasy tropes for a fist full of other anime tropes, doesn't mean it is bad plot (Well it is when it is being serious, but that is beside the point.  It CAN be funny).

Ultimately though, a standard path split with good writing is fine.  There may be better more elegant ways to do divergant plot than split path, but it is just one element of a game.  So what you are describing of the writing there Monkey does corroborate what Djinn is saying fairly well.  If it weren't N1 I would probably check it out.  I will not play another N1 game that I can't cheat to hell and back though.

Stealing reduces your karma by a little bit. You have to steal a lot, like a LOT, for it to really dent your karma. I opened up the console to check it out, and you have to steal about 100 things to equal killing one good NPC. Karma values are scaled way up in this.

Also, Doma: Did you loot the 10mm "Ultra" SMG off the temp PC? That thing is fucking amazing, and I don't mean just by 10mm gun standards, I mean "better than 95% of the guns in this game."

[Sierra]

Frederic Chopin Self-Insertion Fantasy World: The enemies are so cute that I almost feel bad about hitting them. Even with an umbrella. Also, Ritardando has the sparkliest sewers in the long and sordid history of sewers.

Stopped just after Polka invited Chopin over for the night. "Hey mom, can this guy I met in the field late at night stay with us? Did I mention he thinks we're all living in his head?" I'm sure that'll go over well. Also, I'm totally sure there's nothing evil about this Count Forte guy. And mineral powder totally isn't this world's equivalent of cocaine or something.

EDIT: Oh yeah, still chipping away at VP2. Came a couple hundred damage short of one-rounding Odin (someone in the party was set up to learn skills rather than optimized for attack, otherwise he would've been crushed). Lezard's return is still pretty stylish. Too bad chapter six is such a travesty.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Frederic Chopin Self-Insertion Fantasy World: The enemies are so cute that I almost feel bad about hitting them. Even with an umbrella. Also, Ritardando has the sparkliest sewers in the long and sordid history of sewers.

Stopped just after Polka invited Chopin over for the night. "Hey mom, can this guy I met in the field late at night stay with us? Did I mention he thinks we're all living in his head?" I'm sure that'll go over well. Also, I'm totally sure there's nothing evil about this Count Forte guy. And mineral powder totally isn't this world's equivalent of cocaine or something.

Your building up your expectations too much for Eternal Sonata. Nothing they bring up in one scene EVER relates to the next scene. It's frustrating because the set-ups sound like their conclusions would be trainwrecks, but at least they'd be entertaining trainwrecks.

*rages at Eternal Sonata*
-Djinn

[Meeplelard]

Game that has already devoured my body and soul, and most of my mind:

70:47:36.

I will not say anything more.  No, I am still not done with the game if that's what you think I mean.

[Pyro]

ES Plot is not meant to be logical. Which makes sense, considering what it actually is. In that sense, I guess you could say it is logical!

Yeah, just concentrate on the pretty, the music, and combat. The plot is there to get some kind of message across (presumably whatever Chopin is trying to realize before dying). Too bad this wasn't pulled off very well. The game might have been greatly improved by having actual depth to it. Oh well.