FMW
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I've purchased both FE 3 Houses and Dragon Quest 11. On one hand that's a dumb decision. Two turn based, slow paced, million hour long JRPGs at the same time? That's enough to fill the schedule for the rest of 2019! But actually I'm finding that they're a killer 1-2 punch. Fire Emblem is a pretty demanding and granular game. You need to manage the allocation and durability of every item in your army, every units current class and future class pathing, motivation, support rankings, etc. And I'm playing on hard/classic so I need to pay close attention on the battlefield. Meanwhile Dragon Quest 11 is the opposite. The combat is VERY simple, the world is vibrant and pleasant to spend time in, the story is simple, the game literally reminds you where you are and what you're supposed to be doing every time you boot it up. If I've had a rotten day at work or am low energy, Dragon Quest is the "easy listening" game option in my life. And I have Fire Emblem for when I have a block of time and I'm like "all right, I'm fired up and gonna put some quality time into a video game and beat that sucker". ...the play hours thing is still a problem though. At my current pace these two games are literally going to be the only things I play until January.
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It's unfair that so many games have lame subtitles like Judgement, Awakening, Rising, Rebirth etc and then there's Shin Megami Tensei III with both Nocturne AND Lucifers Call. Both subtitles are bangers and both are unused by other games. So many games would be improved by these subtitles. Bioshock: Lucifer's Call. Pokemon Aria and Pokemon Nocturne.
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Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne This game is too old. The newer SMT games are better. Better balance of combat options, better UI, more demons, better story arcs, better save systems. But SMT Nocturne is such a foundational work to this series I had gotten it into my head that I need to play it. FINALLY after 3 years of chipping away at this file (to say nothing of multiple failed attempts longer ago) I beat it. I didn't play on hard, I was probably overleveled, and I would never have gotten the super strong Freikugel spell without finding out about it online. But still. I won. I beat the goddamn game. This one's been my white whale for a very long time. Do not recommend. I'm glad to have it done.
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I've been doing this thing where I just buy 1 new smallish platformer game every week or two and work through it then buy another one. It means I'm spending about $10 a week and I've been quite happy. So far my progression has been: 1. The Messenger. I made a thread about it. It's okay. But not my favorite. Could potentially buy the sequel that they set up at the finale. Also what's with indie games that took forever to make setting up sequels? The Messenger, Iconoclasts, and Axiom Verge all do this and then there's been nothing on any of these sequels because tiny team development takes forever. 2. Steam World Dig 2: It's super good! Everyone seems to agree on this point. What's most interesting to me is how they mix fixed level design with open ended level design. I've never seen anything quite like it. The challenges are fixed, but the player gets free roam to dig through a lot of the environment. So you always need to overcome the stuff, but the exact sequence and difficulty of the jumps ends up determined by how smart your dig path is. Steamworld Heist was good, but I could play a new Dig game like this every year. 3. Iconoclasts. It's a collection of good parts that maybe don't go great together? The big focuses are story and puzzles. But it's an exploration platformer type game. So you end up stopping for lots of talking and stopping for lots of tricky puzzles. It's good story and good puzzles, but I never really got into a flow with this one. Weird pacing. But still overall good! The game is very smart about realizing that it's not an action game or a platformer game really and tailoring your upgrades and challenges to match. This is 100% a game to play on easy. The action element is unimportant so just make it negligible to rush through enemies faster. Beating them is not the point. 4. Sonic Mania: Super good! It's still beholden to the old games in some ways that we could probably move on from. I don't need green hill zone, I don't need to restart stages over and over to make attempts at a secret zone for a chaos emerald, I don't need to die if Sonic ever gets "pinched" by a moving platform even by a pixel. But the levels are great the music is great the controls are great and boy isn't it silly that they brought back MIGHTY and RAY instead of literally any other Sonic characters. 5. the Mummy Demastered: I just started this one. It's interesting. It almost feels like Castlevania 4 more than anything. Your character is a great big clunky sprite, you have limited mobility with punishing enemy knockback on contact, and the gameplay is all about setting up attacks using your 8 degrees of aiming. Fortunately Castlevania 4 is super rad so I'm into it.
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Okay folks, hard question time. I can build one of two Pokemon teams. Which option is better: A team named after all the usernames in "Hackers" or a team named after all the call signs in "Top Gun". The Pokemon selected will need to fit the names. So the two options are: Zero Cool/Crash Override/Acid Burn/Lord Nikon/Phantom Phreak/Cereal Killer OR six of the following Maverick/Iceman/Goose/Viper/Merlin/Jester/Cougar/Wolfman/Slider/Sundown/Hollywood/Stinger
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Currently playing Sonic Mania. Never really played old Sonic games. I love it! At first I hated it. The physics are so bizarre. Just trying to walk up a mild incline is pure suffering. Every motion at low speed feels like molasses. So I can see why someone wouldn't like that. But THEN I started to get a little better at it. And the levels started forcing me to be better at it too. Figuring out some jump timings, how you jump off slopes, how you can change jump angle with charge spin, etc. And now that I'm kind of into this, I'm starting to have these awful elitist thoughts. "Ah yes. Lesser platformers aim to give you control that is precise and simple to interface with. You can understand Mario's jump arc in seconds. Such games are for the unwashed masses. Sonic is a more refined sort of platformer, that requires much greater investment and understanding up front and is subsequently much more rewarding for those with proper understanding of the form. Those who dislike 2D Sonic merely are unable to appreciate it's esoteric momentum based pleasures." Oil Ocean sucks though. Haaaaate that level.
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I wouldn't recommend skipping 9. That's one of the very best Dragon Quest games. It's a radical departure from the traditional formula, but it's not like it's poorly executed or anything. And the story still hits that great melancholy beat that the best Dragon Quest games do. The only reasons to skip DQ 9 are that you don't have a DS/3DS to play it or because you're bummed out you can't get the free extra content anymore since the Nintendo wifi DS system went down. If you're going to skip one, skip 7. So so so much bloat. Good content is in there! But I'm not sure that it's really worth the slog to experience it. Also DQ 4 is my favorite and every JRPG ever should steal its structure.
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My graphics card can't run Dragon Quest 11. So I either need to shell out hundreds for a cryptocurrency price inflated card or wait FOREVER for Switch version. Life is suffering.
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Ouch.
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It doesn't require a beast but if you absolutely need 60fps then definitely don't skimp on the GPU. My 960 can't do much better than hover between 45-60 and the graphical options are pretty barebones, so there's not a lot of room for tweaking. Shadows are the biggest performance hog but even just turning them down to 2 (max is 3) looks kinda bad. The draw distance on them becomes way too short. At one point I was in a fairly dark cave and saw light coming from around a corner not far ahead. I walked forward and suddenly the entire area suddenly became dark. There was no torch, I'm assuming it was just global illumination from the engine that was visible because the shadows weren't rendered yet. That's when I realized that turning those down wasn't an option lol.
Also, for some reason 30fps feels really weird in this game. Maybe it's because I got used to it running smoother right out of the game but once I tried locking it to 30 it felt super rough, even after using RTSS to stabilize the frame pacing.
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Card prices aren't as inflated now. Hell, I almost could call it normal (besides the inflation due to RAM prices).
I forget where you were from but shop around. I'm sure you can find something.
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The other day I was making the point that immersive sims kinda have a uniform tone. They're always doing this post apocalypse/dystopia/post apocalyptic dystopia (hi Bioshock!) thing with brutal murdering and high difficulty stealth and lots of fiddly parts. So I asked why this is, and what an immersive sim with a pleasant disposition might look like. The answer I got is that maybe that game is Zelda Breath of the Wild. I thought that was an interesting perspective. And it makes me think about some of the directions the inevitable sequel might take differently.
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Boy. The ending of Mario Odyssey is the most Sonic the Hedgehog thing ever. Pop rock song + running through exploding level + making last 10 minutes revolve around a new game mechanic never before introduced.
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Plus EMBARRASSINGLY bad lyrics. Another Sonic staple
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Those lyrics are GREAT. You're crazy!!
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Reinforcements when they're already there from the get go aren't reinforcements. They're bad intelligence.
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Well I started playing Valkyria Chronicles. But then that had characters to put in your army from Skies of Arcadia. Vyse and Aika. At first my reaction was "This is lame, what's the point of putting all this work into developing your wartime scenario tone if you're gonna dump some happy go lucky JRPG heroes in there"? But then I thought "Huh, I should go back and play Skies of Arcadia after this. That's a good game and I never got more than an hour into it." And THEN I reached the Desert Tank and that sucks. So now I'm playing Skies of Arcadia! I'm like 15 hours in. That's a good game! The slow load in and animations in the encounters is the biggest anchor weighing the game down. If battles moved twice as snappy as they do then I would be totally happy. But as is with slow encounters not only does that slow dungeon crawling to a, well, crawl - but it ALSO makes me not want to explore the sky to find sidequests. Because the encounters are frequent, they are weak, but they are slooooow. Everything else is good though. Great when drinking, I don't get so impatient then.
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God damn. So Valkyria Chronicles is the real deal huh?
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The tank talk will never end.
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Just got to the desert tank. Can confirm, game sucks. First impressions can be deceiving y'all
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[sing]This is the fight that never ends, yes it goes on and on my friends...[/sing]
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Sonic and the Black Knight It's... bad. Really bad. It's kinda mind boggling how a game with this much production value made it out with such little polish given to the interactive component. I played through almost the entire game in one sitting while working through a bottle of whiskey. It wasn't a great Wednesday.
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The splatoon 2 Octo cinematic trailer is one of my favorite things in 2018 so far. Absolutely ludicrous. Also did you guys know that there are full on hologram concerts where the splatoon pop stars sing their vocalizer songs? Super weird. Harmless! But super weird. Will definitely purchase when I own a Switch.
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I have beaten Hollow Knight, Ori and the Blind Forest, and Tales of Berseria. Moving on to Jet Set Radio! FF IX STILL stays on the backlog.
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Tales of Berseria complete. Hollow Knight complete. On to Ori and the Blind Forest!
...FF 9 can continue to sit in backlog
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Have you played older Tales games (not Zestiria)? I haven't tried Zestiria, but I tried Berseria and I think the new combat threw me off... What's your take on the old combat (like in Vesperia/Xillia) vs the new one?
Does the combat become really good once I have more skills or something?
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I played PS2 era Tales. Symponia, Symphonia 2, Abyss. Nothing between that and this. I would say that I like Berseria combat way better than the old combat because that was mostly just mashing basic attack combos forever. Berseria lets you chain longer attack strings, and with greater variety.
And yes, Berseria combat becomes muuuch better as you level up. It's a game where the systems don't click into place for how they're supposed to work together until you unlock all of them, and getting all the tutorials and skills takes like 15 hours. So if your first impression was bad, I agree! The beginning plays pretty bad.
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Ah I see! Good to know! I will look into trying it again!
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Bringing this thread back from the dead to let y'all know that Etrian Odyssey V is dope.
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Hey, just a quick update. My Secret Santa went and double dipped! I have now also received Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight. I had never heard of this one either. It looks like it's another metroidvania. I'm gonna bump this up on the "to play" list above Ori. Because Ori is a lock, that's definitely a game I'll like. So I can save that. Momodora? That's a new strange thing. I'm going to get into that first just to figure out what I'm dealing with. Also I started Tales of Berseria and the protagonist is in a pit yearning to eat human flesh meanwhile I'm doing fetch quests as her domesticated obedient body double. I don't understand what's going on at all.
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The best laid plans don't count for anything if you aren't STEAM FRIENDS with your SECRET SANTA TARGET. Oops. Check your friend invites everyone. I kinda forgot an important step here.
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I received three gifts this year from Mr. Mal. I received Tales of Berseria. I really liked Tales of Symphonia as a kid, but I haven't played any of these games in a long time. They went Xbox exclusive for Vesperia, then to PSP/Vita for some games and I also didn't own those, and then they were churning out so many the quality started to drop... I've kind of been waiting for there to be a good solid Tales game so I can try a modern one, and by all accounts Berseria is the best in a long time. I've already got this one downloaded. I received Ori and the Blind Forest. After absolutely devouring Hollow Knight this year and Axiom Verge last year, Ori was next on my list. Platforming heavy Metroidvanias are my thing. This is pretty much 100% going to be a hit for me. I'm saving it until I wrap up Hollow Knight after the holiday rush. I received 100% Orange Juice. I have no idea what the fuck this is. Nobody tell me. I'm savoring the mystery. I'll boot this up some cold night in February and go in completely blind. That's kind of exciting! Thank you Santa Mal!
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The Wii Shop Channel is going down. Which means the only reasonable course of action is to buy an SD card, download all your old Virtual Console games there for storage, and then buy more! I mean, what if I want to play the entire original Phantasy Star series some day and don't have it??
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7th Annual PXOD Secret Santa! -- Targets Assigned
FMW replied to TheMightyEthan's topic in Event Planning
I'll go in on this. I passed last year, but this year left me in a better spot. Happy to rejoin the tradition. -
Hollow Knight gets my seal of approval
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You know how Darksiders was the ultimate PS2 era game? 2 parts Zelda, 1 part God of War, 1 part Prince of Persia, all tied together with cool art and polish? Hollow Knight feels like the next generation of Darksiders. 2 parts Dark Souls, 1 part Limbo, 1 part Ori (or insert popular Metroidvania here), and it's all tied together with great art and polish.
It's a collective derivative of everything popular right now. But that's kind of okay, because it's so goooood.
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@Ultra TCP Yep, any day.
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Goddamn indie devs. WORK FASTER!
