Mister Jack

Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin It was okay, but I agree with the general sentiment that it's the weakest of the trilogy. The first half of this game is actually pretty bad and not very fun. I was tempted to drop it, but I decided to push through it and it did get better in the second half. Not great, but better. There's a fair bit of artificial difficulty going on here such as ambushes by enemies you couldn't have possibly known about, mobs of 6+ enemies in a game that really isn't designed for fighting against crowds, and tying your i-frames to a stat—which might be one of the dumbest ideas I've ever heard for an RPG. The early stages are downright painful, but once you level up a bit and actually build yourself a character that isn't useless it becomes more fun. I'll probably try out the DLC, but I kinda doubt I'll ever want to revisit this one like I could see myself doing with the other two.

I started playing Dark Souls II. I know it's the most divisive one, which is why I originally skipped it, but I was in the mood for a soulslike game and figured I'd like it more than Code Vein, at least. So far I do, but I'm not sure that's saying much. The other Souls games are about rough but reasonable challenges but this one seems designed like it doesn't care if you have fun or not, it just wants to beat you into submission with ludicrous enemy placement to preserve its reputation as "teh hardcorez gaem". Not even Nioh makes you fight this many enemies at the same time. That cutscene in the beginning where the witch is like "You're gonna lose all your souls over and over! Mwe he he he he!" made a pretty bad first impression. It doesn't help that I decided to play as a cleric for a change and then four bosses later found out that clerics were nerfed into near uselessness and never fixed. I also really hate the adaptability stat. It makes me feel like the first twenty levels I gain don't even matter because you really need to raise that stat at all costs if you want your rolls and your healing to be worth a damn. There are a few things it improved upon from the first game that I appreciate, but in many ways it feels like a step back. I'm enjoying it just enough to stick with it, but I really hope it gets better later on.

@TheMightyEthan I agree with pretty much all of that. Honestly if I had been in charge I would have tossed out that storyline entirely because the theme it is addressing just feels really sophomoric for a universe with so much heart and thought put into it. I've seen that story done a million times before and done better too. Wikipedia says Druckmann wrote both games but I swear there had to be someone else doing some major input for the first one because I don't know how else you have such a staggering drop in quality in a single sequel.

@TheMightyEthan Everything gets more expensive but at the same time wages on average have stagnated for god knows how long. You just can't have it both ways. If the minimum wage were actually raised to a livable standard like it should have been ages ago I think people could swallow a 70 dollar price point a lot more easily but I suspect that for a lot of folks this is just too much. When the federal government still believes that $7.25 is good enough to get by in the year 2020 then at some point something's gotta give.

OneShot I got this in that bundle for racial justice that itch.io was doing a while back. In fact, this was the main game I wanted when I got it. This is a puzzle/adventure game where you guide a little catboy (or girl?) named Niko on a quest to save a dying world by reviving the sun. I really can't say any more than that without ruining what makes it so unique. You can probably beat it in two or three sittings and it's worth experiencing at least once.

Hamilton Does this count? Whatever, I watched it on Disney+. I wanted to see it live but ain't nobody seeing any plays anytime soon so I just subscribed for one month so I could see it at all. It's pretty good. Good songs, good cast, some pretty funny moments in there too. I think anyone who likes musicals should reasonably enjoy this show. I also want to give credit to the cinematography. This is basically a recording of a live performance and I was afraid that lazy camera work would make it feel boring to watch at home but they really made the most out of what they had to work with so the Disney+ viewers wouldn't feel like they're watching a watered down version. I'd still like to see it live someday if this damn pandemic ever goes away but in the meantime this is a fine way to experience the play.

Well this certainly explains why Sony is gung-ho on bringing former Playstation exclusives to Steam. Nothing wrong with wanting to double dip on other platforms but Jesus Christ, you can get the complete PS4 version with DLC for 10 bucks these days.

Okay I would pay 70 bucks for Bloodborne 2.

I'm hearing rumors recently (and there are also some articles floating around) suggesting that next gen games could cost 70 dollars. If that turns out to be the case I'm gonna have to seriously rethink this hobby and probably stop buying new games at release except for stuff I'm anticipating years in advance like Persona 6. It may "only" be 10 bucks more but that would add up really quick. I have a huge backlog of games I've never touched, and if this new price point becomes the norm it might be time to finally start going through that.

Return of the Obra Dinn This is a great little puzzle/detective game brought to us by the guy who did Papers, Please. The premise is that you play as an insurance investigator for the East India Company in the year 1807 who is sent to check out a ghost ship that has mysteriously returned after a five year absence to figure out what happened to everyone onboard. You are given a logbook to chronicle the people and events that you uncover and a pocket watch that can show you the immediate events preceding a person's death as long as you have a trace of their corpse. Being able to directly witness the moment of someone's death makes it sound like this game is going to be easy but it really isn't. There are only a handful of corpses on the ship out of a crew of 60 and very few of the death scenes directly reveal the victim's name. You have to infer the specifics for yourself based on extreme attention to detail within the death scenes you examine. You need to pay attention to things like clothing, occupations, languages, accents, and even social circles to figure out who everybody is, how they died, and sometimes who killed them. Sometimes it comes down to sheer process of elimination. It can be very tricky, and I was almost tempted to consult a guide a couple of times. If you went into this knowing ahead of time who everybody is and how they died you could blow through this game in maybe 90 minutes but as a first-timer it took me roughly 10 hours to figure everything out. It's well worth solving too because the fate of the ship's crew is quite interesting. I don't want to spoil anything but take my word for it that this crew has seen some shit. If figuring out the identities of 60 strangers sounds daunting, rest assured that the game helps you out a little by permanently locking in every 3 correct answers you submit so that you'll be working with a progressively smaller list, although those last few entries can be the hardest of the bunch to figure out. Great game, though. Anyone who likes solving mysteries should pick it up.

Hollow Knight I bought this a while back but got bored with it after the first couple hours. I decided to give it another chance and I'm glad I did because it is pretty good after you get past the slow start. Would I call it the best Metroidvania ever made like some people are calling it? Not by a long shot. I might put it on the low end of a top 10 list, but that's it. It's got tight controls and fun abilities to unlock, but there were a bunch of niggling little things that got under my skin. I couldn't make heads or tails of the story, checkpoints sometimes feel too far apart, some fights go on for waaay too long, the environments put shit in the foreground that block your view of enemies and hazards, the screen shakes every time you hit or get hit...it goes on, honestly. They're all minor issues on their own but put together they did bring my enjoyment down a little. Oh, and I really, really hate the map system. I don't like having to hunt down an NPC to get a new map in every area, I don't like having to buy a bunch of shit just to make the map useful, I don't like how it only updates at save points and not as you go, and I despise having to use up one of my precious charm slots just so I can see where on the map I'm currently located. I still liked the game and I would still recommend it, I just don't think I adore it the way everyone else seems to. I'd give it an 8, maybe.

Randomizer modes. Bloodstained added one and it's fun as hell. I think every action rpg should have one. Imagine replaying Dark Souls but all the enemy and item placements are completely unknown. Maybe you'll get lucky and get an overpowered piece of equipment right off the bat or maybe you'll get screwed by endgame enemies in the beginner area. Once you've beaten a game this is a great way to keep it interesting.

You got me, Steam Sale. I resisted the last few you did but you finally got me.

Code Vein Wow, I hated this game, which sucks because I really didn't want to. I went into it with reasonable expectations, figuring it wouldn't be as good as Nioh or Bloodborne but that it would still be solidly enjoyable. Holy shit was I wrong. I usually try not to rely on summons in these games too much but I basically speedran this game with summons almost the entire time because I wanted to get it over with. Okay, so before I take a giant dump on it I'll mention the few things I did like. The story is interesting. Not a masterpiece by any means, but it was neat enough for me to be willing to suffer through the gameplay to see where it was going. There are multiple endings, which is nice, but fuck playing this game twice. The music can also be pretty good sometimes, and there are some ideas in the gameplay that I liked. I liked having an AI companion with me at all times who was actually quite helpful, although you can choose to leave them behind if you really want to go it alone (you don't). I also liked what they were going for with the class system, although the execution is a little hard to understand at first. Lastly, I liked that you could summon pretty much whenever you want and you don't need to farm any consumable items to play co-op. In fact, a co-op partner doesn't even replace your AI partner so you can have a party of 3. I would like to see more games of this genre that are built around actual parties like most JRPGs rather than just you going it alone all the time. However, it must be said that while you're summoning you can't rest at checkpoints or use items, which is really stupid and arbitrary. Alright, that's where my praise ends. This game sucked. Frame drops, bad load times, combat that just has no weight, a severe lack of enemy types, cheap and frustrating bosses, only a handful of weapons, and level design that is shockingly, embarrassingly bad. Don't even get me started. Cathedral of the Sacred Blood might be the worst level design I have ever seen in a modern game. The others aren't that much better. Not only are they boring to look at, full of narrow corridors, easy to get lost in, and chock full of WAY too many bottomless pits, but most of them have some kind of annoying gimmick. Imagine if every level in Dark Souls was Blighttown. Hell, these levels make Blighttown look like Anor Londo. Hey, you want an ice level where the ground always breaks beneath you and plunges you to your death? No? How about a fire level where you are forced to constantly take damage by walking over burning hot pathways because there's no other route available? Still no? How about a swamp where your movement speed is constantly halved? Pick your poison! Thank god I bought this used. I'm getting my money back on this piece of shit tomorrow. Fuck this game! Watch it go!

I'm on the fence about Code Vein so far. I knew it was going to be inferior to Nioh 2 but it's got some performance issues, the level design so far is kind of bland, and the second boss was way way too hard for the beginning of the game. I am willing to look past all of that, but what's harder to overlook is that the combat feels a little clunky. It's not really as responsive as a Souls game and it definitely isn't as responsive as Nioh. I'm willing to give this game a little longer to see if I come around but if I don't get used to it in the next day or two I might just refund it.

I've finished Nioh 2 with 100% but I still have an itch for this kind of game so I picked this up. I have heard that it's not as good as Nioh but I only paid 20 bucks for it so it's fine.

Well, Nioh 2 is officially platinumed. It didn't take as long as I thought it would since New Game+ difficulty is much more generous with handing out skill points for your weapons. I had already mastered the katana and odachi during my normal playthrough and going through again on NG+ I was able to master two weapon types per day. I'm done for now, but I'm looking forward to the DLC.

They really upped their game for the Nioh 2 music. This soundtrack is badass.

Nioh 2 This game solidifies the Nioh series as the best Souls type game not made by From. In fact, I actually enjoyed this more than some of the From games because the combat is just so much more complex and rewarding. About the only other game that can deliver samurai battles as frantic as this is Sekiro. Ghost of Tsushima will certainly have its work cut out for it when it comes out. They didn't change too much from the first game, though. There's a new counter mechanic that comes in three different styles and you can also now absorb enemy souls to use their moves in battle, which is a mechanic I always love to see. Other than that it isn't too different. They took what already worked and added more. More weapons, more enemies, more levels, more everything. You now create your own character instead of having to play as William, which is nice, and the story, while nothing amazing, is also better than the story in the first game. I don't know if it's just because I've had a lot of practice but this game felt easier than the first one, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. There's no bullshit 2-on-1 samurai duels in this game, and thank god because those were way more frustrating than fun in the last game. Yokai abilities are also much more versatile than the living weapon from before, and the new counter moves give you lots of options to create openings. That's not to say it's a cakewalk. I still dropped many an F-bomb while going through this game. The enemies didn't really get weaker or dumber, it's just that you now have more tools to deal with them. You absolutely have to learn how to use these tools too because you will not get by just blocking and dodging. That's what makes the combat in Nioh so great, though. There's so many different ways to approach a fight and there are probably dozens of viable strategies out there for every single boss. I platinumed the last game and I think I'm going to try to do the same here, although this requires mastering every single type of weapon and I went through the whole game using just the katana and the odachi so I'm probably in for a long grind.

CRASH IS BACK Now do Spyro next!

I would love to see an updated version of the Persona 2 duology as well. They were good games held back by a bad encounter rate and load times and a PC port could fix that. Of course this is probably not going to happen since they're so old. I'll just cross my fingers for an enhanced P3 port.

I mean, obviously I was going to buy this.

Nioh 2 is reminding me just how much fun the Nioh gameplay can be, and now it's even better. Yokai moves feel a lot more rewarding than the living weapon system of Nioh 1 and on top of that this feels like the leap from Dark Souls to Bloodborne in the sense that there's now a high risk/high reward counter move that you can use to turn an enemy's unblockable attacks against them. This game is also hard as fuck, much harder than the early game of Dark Souls was, but I'm not struggling as much as I did in the beta because now I can actually properly customize my character to my preferred playstyle. Three player co-op is also a lot of fun but it completely breaks the game even after it increases the enemy spawns to account for the extra help. I'm trying not to abuse it but it's a great way to farm for items and exp when you join someone else's game. You get to keep half of the exp you earn as a visitor even if you lose and you get multipliers if you win so that's a nice incentive to help out if you need to level grind. Out of all the Souls copycats out there, this series is probably my favorite. Combat just feels so damn good and now there's even more depth to it than before.