Mister Jack Posted February 22, 2016 Report Share Posted February 22, 2016 I'm going through my backlog while I wait for my new PC to arrive and finally decided to play through Dishonored. It's a decent stealth game, but something about the design that really bothers me is that most of the cool powers are lethal, but going lethal gives you a bad ending, so you have to ignore them if you want the good ending. I would have preferred something like inFamous where there are two different power sets based on how you play rather than one power set that clearly favors a certain approach. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
toxicitizen Posted February 22, 2016 Report Share Posted February 22, 2016 Yeah, Dishonored's biggest issue was that it gives you a ton of fun tools to play with but then tells you you're a bad person for using them. Personally, I played it as if it were a Thief game, so it didn't really affect my playthrough all that much. But that's definitely something I hope they improve in the sequel. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mal Posted February 25, 2016 Report Share Posted February 25, 2016 Disgaea As I feared, rough port. Graphical issues all over with unstable frame rate. I can recover from it by switching SSAO off or switching to the old map which I kind of prefer. Still cannot get rid of the frame drops though. Like why is there frame drops!? There is also the odd delays in movement and I swear menus. I recall I could storm through the menus but in this port it takes quite a while to get through anything. I'll admit that it has been over ten years since I've played Disgaea so I can misremember my experiences. It just seems far slower than I recall. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
toxicitizen Posted February 25, 2016 Report Share Posted February 25, 2016 It's a weird one. Some people are having performance issues but just as many are apparently getting a solid 60 fps. I wouldn't necessarily call it a bad port but I feel like they probably didn't test it on as many different systems/configurations as they should've. For me, the framerate tanks with v-sync on and slows the game to half speed, but it seems to run mostly fine with everything off. Some of these settings are kinda weird, anyway. Like, why would I want DOF in a game like this? Or blur at the top of the screen??? The new ground textures are also hit and miss and the sprite filter makes the characters look blurry as hell, so I kinda like it better with most of it off anyway. Stuff like SSAO and crisper shadows are nice and shows they put some effort into it but it definitely needed a little more work. I really hope NIS are going to salvage this one because I'd hate for this to be the end of the series on PC. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mal Posted February 25, 2016 Report Share Posted February 25, 2016 One thing I noticed is that it is a 32-bit program. I know that some 32-bit programs don't jive well on a 64-bit machine, hell, some don't even run. I'm on Windows 10 so there might be some issues there as well. Ideally I should return this game but as you said, I would hate this to be the last PC Disgaea game. Anyhow, I should praise the game somewhat... they are using some of the correct art assets that were drawn in insane resolution, like the character portraits. So they got that right in some places. Others... not so much. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
toxicitizen Posted February 25, 2016 Report Share Posted February 25, 2016 (edited) IIRC, they actually redid the character portraits. That's why they look so much better than everything else. Also, I thought about Win 10 being a problem as well but I've been reading up and people having performance issues seem to have pretty varied setups. Win 7, 8 and 10 and even folks with 980s are reporting shitty framerates while others with lesser hardware claim the game is running just fine. It's pretty weird. Edited February 25, 2016 by FLD Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mal Posted February 25, 2016 Report Share Posted February 25, 2016 (edited) If we're talking about these guys: I call them portraits but they are better termed as busts. They existed for a while in a digital media disk they sold. It blew my mind when I stumbled across them since the quality completely trashed what was in the PS2 version. I remember it since it was before wide spread broadband internet adoption and I got a rip of the disk from someone on the internet. I showed interest in all things Takehito Harada and someone asked if I wanted a disk full of the stuff. The above was freaking perfect for pre-1080p wallpaper making days. On a 1024 × 768 screen, they were massive. Hell, I think they come in even larger size not shown in internet galleries now (PNG files maybe?). Might be the 1024 × 768 talking though. Anyhow, I'm going to sit on this release for a week to see if it clears up. If it doesn't, I'm returning it before my two weeks. Edited February 25, 2016 by MaliciousH Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
toxicitizen Posted February 25, 2016 Report Share Posted February 25, 2016 Yeah, that's what I meant too. The portraits that show up during dialogue. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Baconrath Posted February 25, 2016 Report Share Posted February 25, 2016 I've played through a good portion of Fire Emblem:Fates (Birthright) so far but I haven't finished it yet. Man, some of these paralogues are brutal.They'll probably be harder in Conquest 'cause I've heard you don't get to grind as much like in Birthright Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deanb Posted February 25, 2016 Report Share Posted February 25, 2016 I'm currently playing Stick of Truth, it's pretty good. A sort of grown-up version of Costume Quest. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CorgiShinobi Posted February 25, 2016 Report Share Posted February 25, 2016 I've played through a good portion of Fire Emblem:Fates (Birthright) so far but I haven't finished it yet. Man, some of these paralogues are brutal. They'll probably be harder in Conquest 'cause I've heard you don't get to grind as much like in Birthright That's what I heard too, that Birthright is the beginner-friendly version whereas Conquest gets to the point that only veterans would be comfortable with. Considering I never got around to Awakening, if I get into Fire Emblem this time around, it'll be Birthright. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
toxicitizen Posted February 26, 2016 Report Share Posted February 26, 2016 Disgaea As I feared, rough port. Graphical issues all over with unstable frame rate. I can recover from it by switching SSAO off or switching to the old map which I kind of prefer. Still cannot get rid of the frame drops though. Like why is there frame drops!? There is also the odd delays in movement and I swear menus. I recall I could storm through the menus but in this port it takes quite a while to get through anything. I'll admit that it has been over ten years since I've played Disgaea so I can misremember my experiences. It just seems far slower than I recall. Don't know if you heard about this yet but it looks like the Steam beta client is the cause of the issues for a lot of people. I had forgotten I was on it but reverting to the regular client seems to have fixed everything for me. Game is running at a solid 60fps with everything turned on now. Might wanna give it a shot if you're on the beta client. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mal Posted February 26, 2016 Report Share Posted February 26, 2016 That did it and game is snappy as hell. There's my old Disgaea with improvements! There's still a but of screen tearing going on but I think I can troubleshoot that away. Now for NIS/NISA to figure out why it is doing that since I use the beta client to aid and improve streaming to my Link. Then again maybe the official client is up-to-date now to include the streaming fixes. Bizarre problem though... And thanks for the heads up, FLD. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheMightyEthan Posted February 26, 2016 Report Share Posted February 26, 2016 How weird that the client would cause performance problems in-game. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
toxicitizen Posted February 26, 2016 Report Share Posted February 26, 2016 (edited) That did it and game is snappy as hell. There's my old Disgaea with improvements! There's still a but of screen tearing going on but I think I can troubleshoot that away. Now for NIS/NISA to figure out why it is doing that since I use the beta client to aid and improve streaming to my Link. Then again maybe the official client is up-to-date now to include the streaming fixes. Bizarre problem though... And thanks for the heads up, FLD. No problem! I'm just glad it turned out this way. It was obvious that NIS put some real effort into the port (and even in marketing it), so it was kinda disappointing to see so many people write it off as another shitty Japanese port. I really hope the damage can be undone, especially with that moronic Destructoid piece calling it "an absolute mess". edit: Ha, Steam reviews are back up to "Mostly Positive" whereas yesterday it was at "Mixed". Glad to see people are changing their reviews to reflect this. Also, did you turn v-sync back on? I get pretty bad tearing with it off but none when it's on. The only real remaining issue now is the broken SSAO, which I can live without. How weird that the client would cause performance problems in-game. Yeah, I'm really curious to know the details on that one. It's not exactly something you'd think would be related. I remember now that I was on the beta client because a lot of features for the Steam Controller just aren't in the regular client yet. I don't really mind but still, I hope they can figure out the problem and patch it anyway. Edited February 26, 2016 by FLD Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deanb Posted February 26, 2016 Report Share Posted February 26, 2016 I'd guess cos Valve carry on putting loads of frivolous shit like the controller driver, VR stuff, Steam Link and Big Picture stuff into the main client instead of running them separately if you get those things. Not only does it cause issues the Steam folder is a bloated horrible mess too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hot Heart Posted February 28, 2016 Report Share Posted February 28, 2016 Guess I'll share this here because it's the only thing I'm playing on a fairly consistent basis and it demonstrates the power of traditional pen & paper RPGs. Also it was a fun session overall. Pathfinder: Iron Gods Inspired by Critical Role and the Pathfinder: Adventure Card Game, my friend decided to start running a Pathfinder campaign. So we all built characters first, kind of rounding out the team but just going for what we were interested in. Except one never really made a character so the DM came up with "Jen Eric" rogue... who is a tricksy Gnome. I've got a monk who focuses on physical perfection but also has incredibly high strength and a vicious combat mindset (she's partially based on Raphael, the ninja turtle ). The other members are a tiefling cleric (our healer whose appearance freaks out regular folk) and a half-elven sorcerer (who likes burning things). So we've been working through the first book of Iron Gods, which involves robots and spaceships and energy weapons, gradually finding our feet. At the moment, I'm sort of the "DPS" although I feel a little like a glass cannon (who has benefitted greatly from many low attack rolls against me). At this point in the adventure we'd found a new level in this "strange metal cave" (we know it's a spaceship, but my monk knows sod all about that stuff) and our cleric rebooted a computer to fix some malfunctioning robots... or at least one's that were ignoring us rather than attacking. Funny story: our sorcerer who hates robots (has dragon lineage and hates the idea of artificial usurpers) shot at one of the robots, triggering some attack mode but which ended with the reboot. While that was going on our rogue had done a graceful leap through the opening along a conveyor belt and into an adjoining room... despite the door being just five feet away. In there, he discovered a bigger robot of the likes we'd never seen before. This is followed by a catastrophic series of events in which we discover that a lot of our attacks appear to "have no effect" on the now unfriendly iron giant (the "hardness" that robots have prevents so many points of damage on every attack... in this case a whopping 10) and our cleric flees only to be KOed by a new surprise challenger (an android we'd been hearing about, along with some gargoyle-like sidekick). The rogue and I are trying to whittle away at the big robot, while the sorcerer is aiding the downed cleric and (unsuccessfully) attempting to placate the new enemies who had been drawn here by the reboot. The giant robot is absolutely stomping me. I manage a critical hit that blows through its defences, but it takes a flurry of power attacks just to penetrate its armour. The rogue can barely hurt it, but is virtually untouchable due to the mage armour cast on it by the sorcerer. In the end, the little guy saves my life coming to my aid with a potion when I'm KOed and dying. With our healer down and three tough combatants going at us, things are looking very bad. At this point, the DM manages to adjust the difficulty somewhat by allowing certain things (like letting the rogue try and drag me away from the robot a little... except he rolled a 1) or letting the rogue flit in and out across the conveyor belt (to be in a position to get sneak attack bonuses). Little did we know, but we were essentially fighting three level 3-4 bosses while at level 3 ourselves. ... the giant robot whacks me again but I just about survive enough to crawl away and chug one of our more powerful healing potions. The robot comes for me again and knocks off another chunk of my health and I have to spend a whole turn just getting back on my feet, which grants him another attack. Thank heavens it misses. By the time it gets round to my turn again, I'm at 2HP and have instructed the rogue (who'd been rushing back and forth) to join the others and forget about me. I do not run from a fight. Either I triumph here or I'm dead. My monk unleashes a last ditch flurry of power attacks for all she's worth and scores a critical hit with the first attack, missing with the second. The first attack does a hefty chunk of damage, chopping off the robot's head and it collapses, defeated. Phew! There's a whole bunch to the rest of the battle (we didn't die!) that was also entertaining but that was the crowning moment for me. Any other result except a critical hit and I was toast. I got my own heroic hard-won fight. Of course, afterwards, the DM reveals to me that had I not killed it and merely done at least 1 damage then its auto-heal effect would've kicked in and it would've regained a huge chunk of health. Also... the thing would not have followed if we'd all left the room as our cleric instructed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mister Jack Posted February 29, 2016 Report Share Posted February 29, 2016 (edited) I'm finally playing The Witcher. As in the first one. As some of you may or may not remember, I have tried to play this game in the past and couldn't. Despite my last PC being more than powerful enough to run a game that old, for SOME reason it was the one program to always give me blue screens. Neither I nor the devs could ever figure out why that kept happening. I never played Witcher 2 or 3 because I just can't bring myself to play games in a series out of order unless the entries are totally unrelated to each other i.e. Final Fantasy. At any rate, I installed the game on my new PC and now I can FINALLY play it without any problems. I normally don't do this, but I'm playing it on easy mode because I'm practically sick of the game at this point and I just want to get through the story so I can move on to Witcher 2 and 3, which I hear are vastly superior. Edited February 29, 2016 by Mister Jack 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
danielpholt Posted February 29, 2016 Report Share Posted February 29, 2016 I'm finally playing The Witcher. As in the first one. As some of you may or may not remember, I have tried to play this game in the past and couldn't. Despite my last PC being more than powerful enough to run a game that old, for SOME reason it was the one program to always give me blue screens. Neither I nor the devs could ever figure out why that kept happening. I never played Witcher 2 or 3 because I just can't bring myself to play games in a series out of order unless the entries are totally unrelated to each other i.e. Final Fantasy. At any rate, I installed the game on my new PC and now I can FINALLY play it without any problems. I normally don't do this, but I'm playing it on easy mode because I'm practically sick of the game at this point and I just want to get through the story so I can move on to Witcher 2 and 3, which I hear are vastly superior.There's some interesting plot beats in that first game. Especially one that revolves around a witch. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deanb Posted February 29, 2016 Report Share Posted February 29, 2016 I liked with Witcher that it wasn't labelled as "easy" n such, but "Story" "Story+" and something else. But yeah, it's fine playing it on the basic version, the story is harder than much of the combat anyway (which I thought was neat, but most find not very compelling). Like you can fuck up kinda bad if you just skip through everything (like, you're not gonna be unable to complete the game, but you'll end up killing the wrong people. Or heck missing entire sections out. Like I missed the werewolf stuff my first time around and bits near the end were kinda confusing). Otherwise, it's not aged brilliantly, there's a lot of re-used assets in the game, but the story is neat and yeah it leads onto Witcher 2 and Witcher 3 which is a great game. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mal Posted March 2, 2016 Report Share Posted March 2, 2016 I think Stardew Valley fits into my gaming schedule quite nicely since saves are hardcoded into the end/start of the day so I can easily call it quits then. It helps regiment out my playtime. As for the game, I think it's quite fun in the running a farm or going caving kind of way. So far I haven't even ended one season yet so I have just the barest of a farm. Between splunking and farming, I don't feel like I have time to just go about town to find my in-game SO. Maybe some automated watering will help with that... It's quite impressive that this is the work of one guy. Makes me think that someday maybe I can pull off a game... think Ys. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mister Jack Posted March 12, 2016 Report Share Posted March 12, 2016 I am finally playing Witcher 2 and it is so much better than the original. Witcher 1 isn't a bad game, not at all, but it really hasn't aged well over the years and the combat in 2 is a vast improvement. I'm still glad I played the first one since I can better understand the story in 2, but I'm not rushing through this one just to get to Witcher 3 like I did with the first one. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SomTervo Posted March 14, 2016 Report Share Posted March 14, 2016 I am finally playing Witcher 2 and it is so much better than the original. Witcher 1 isn't a bad game, not at all, but it really hasn't aged well over the years and the combat in 2 is a vast improvement. I'm still glad I played the first one since I can better understand the story in 2, but I'm not rushing through this one just to get to Witcher 3 like I did with the first one. If you get accustomed to TW1 and 2, the third one is going to blow your socks off. It's on another level from most games, but in comparison with the first two, it's on a vastly different level. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
danielpholt Posted March 14, 2016 Report Share Posted March 14, 2016 Witcher 3 is a fine game, but I (and I don't think I'm alone here) think Witcher 2 is the pinnacle of that series from a gameplay and story perspective. Witcher 3 is almost too much game, it's too daunting. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deanb Posted March 22, 2016 Report Share Posted March 22, 2016 So lately I've been playing Lightning Returns and it's sort of quite mixed for me. I'm enjoying playing it for the most part, apart from the whole time issues which I have been tempted to use CheatEngine as suggested by Eleven but tbh I can't figure it out. But it's certainly with its flaws and I'm really bummed that they carry on further and further departing from old Final Fantasy formulas. The battle system is quite annoying, having just Lightning to control, only a handful of spells to use and having to manually block damage (which seeing when an enemy will attack is hard amongst all the particle effects and really should have clearer telegraphing). The quests are mostly fetch quests in many cases, but I don't mind as you usually complete these in the process of doing your usual tasks. Unsure if I'm keen on the continuing direction FF is heading in. I've also been playing Puzzle Quest 2 on my phone, figured I'd finish that off. Turns out there's a "bug" in that stops you after going past the first floor unless you "purchase a class", which it won't let you do, and I'd purchased the game years ago any way. Looking at the reviews it seems a lot of people are having this issue. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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