What game are you playing?

[wankerness]

Yeah, crafting generally is terrible and I think there's been a backlash to it recently (finally). It usually doesn't affect the controls, though. It's a waste of time side activity that clutters inventories up horribly. Also, it often makes it so you spend a lot of time pausing and having to destroy items in your inventory cause it's full of useless crafting stuff and you can't pick up useful objects.

 

[mongey]

When I played that game, I found that it took that idea a bit far. The "vibe" is great, the art style is great, the sort of feel of the game is really nicely put together, but the difficulty curve and lack of information/guidance were kind of a turn off of me rather than a plus. I never ended up finishing the game cause it was just too frustrating. Callbacks are great and all, but there are good reasons that game design has changed since that.

I agree . I am enjoying it, and i finally worked out what the hell is going on with the map and the currency and locks .But things progress for a reason .Difficulty so far isn't too bad. but Im guessing it will spike up as I have read

 

[Ralyks]

Still playing Yakuza 0, but the urge to buy Red Dead Redemption 2 May be too great...

 

[Leviathus]

Been shootin' these bastards on red bread reduction 2! :: spits ::

EDIT:

 

[KnightBrolaire]

been playing the hell out of black ops 4. I haven't played COD since blops 1 so it's fun to come back and play cod after so long.

 

[Mathemagician]

In CoD the rampart is imo the best gun until the spitfire. YMMV as I can’t snipe for shit.

 

[wankerness]

The reviews I read of Red Dead Redemption 2, even the raves, make it sound like it has clunky controls and is often intentionally being non-entertaining, partially artistically and partially because it seems more concerned with being COWBOY SIMULATOR instead of an arcade-type game like GTA V's single player. Like, taking cover behind stuff is a mess (clunk) or when you call your horse it doesn't instantly appear behind you like almost every other game with horses, it runs to you in real time and you have to wait (COWBOY SIMULATOR). It sounds risky enough that I'm not touching it until it either gets a big discount or until I play through the first one and find that I love it.

 

[LeviathanKiller]

The reviews I read of Red Dead Redemption 2, even the raves, make it sound like it has clunky controls and is often intentionally being non-entertaining, partially artistically and partially because it seems more concerned with being COWBOY SIMULATOR instead of an arcade-type game like GTA V's single player. Like, taking cover behind stuff is a mess (clunk) or when you call your horse it doesn't instantly appear behind you like almost every other game with horses, it runs to you in real time and you have to wait (COWBOY SIMULATOR). It sounds risky enough that I'm not touching it until it either gets a big discount or until I play through the first one and find that I love it.

Thanks for the warning on that then

 

[KnightBrolaire]

In CoD the rampart is imo the best gun until the spitfire. YMMV as I can’t snipe for shit.

yeah i've been using the rampart and hades pretty much exclusively, they shred ppl

 

[Mathemagician]

I couldn’t figure out what I was always being murdered with the first week so I started watching the kill-cams and looking at the gun until I matched it up. I switched from a rank 9 ICR to a rank 0 Rampart and went from never winning gunfights to “oh that’s why”.

 

[QuantumCybin]

The reviews I read of Red Dead Redemption 2, even the raves, make it sound like it has clunky controls and is often intentionally being non-entertaining, partially artistically and partially because it seems more concerned with being COWBOY SIMULATOR instead of an arcade-type game like GTA V's single player. Like, taking cover behind stuff is a mess (clunk) or when you call your horse it doesn't instantly appear behind you like almost every other game with horses, it runs to you in real time and you have to wait (COWBOY SIMULATOR). It sounds risky enough that I'm not touching it until it either gets a big discount or until I play through the first one and find that I love it.

I’ve played it for about five hours so far and (mind you, I played the first RDR back in 2010 when it came out and loved it so I’m biased) but I am really enjoying it. Yes, the pace of the game is slow, but Rockstar put a ton of work into the little details of this game it’s pretty cool. The graphics, even on my standard PS4, are beautiful. I think RDR 2 will be an example of a game pushing the current console hardware as far as it’ll go.

There’s no traditional “fast travel”. So if traversing across a big map and spending most of the time doing so in the awesome “cinematic camera” (basically turns on auto run and makes your horse follow your waypoint automatically) sounds boring and shit to you, yeah I wouldn’t get it. This is a game that you should really take your time in, like The Witcher 3.

 

[wankerness]

I'm not talking about "Fast Travel," I'm talking about your horse making it to you to START travel. Like, Witcher 3, even if you rode everywhere, if you left your horse somewhere and ran around for a long time you wouldn't whistle for it and then wait for the horse to path through everything you did and eventually make it to you, it just instantly appeared off the edge of the camera and moved towards you. And I'm definitely not impatient with amount of content or depth of character bench or anything; I just played Witcher 3 a year or so ago and went through most of the side missions and all the expansion stuff and after taking about 5 hours to start enjoying it I loved the hell out of it and by the end though it was one of my favorite games ever, at least from a character point of view. That walk with Siri in the winter was the most moving thing I've ever experienced in a game, by FAR. Those writers and voice actors are only approached by Naughty Dog in quality, but ND never had the same size canvas to build a plot and characters with that much detail as their games usually just have to be cover-based shooters that clock in well under 40 hours and include lots of big explosions. Not to knock the likes of Last of Us, that is one brutal and uncompromising game with how the ending goes.

ANYWAY, horse running to you, minor thing, I know, it just seemed emblematic of the kinds of things I was hearing about it. On the other side of the coin with the same attention to realism, though, the world really seemed alive in a way almost nothing else ever has. I am intrigued by this but again it sounds like something very potentially frustrating and thus I'm not going to dive in without playing the first one first until it gets cheaper. Based on GTAV, that probably won't be for several months at least, which is fine. I have RDR1, I just have been on an RPG/Action RPG frenzy for months and haven't yet wanted to interrupt it for 40 hours or however long that game is to check it out. Plus, my Xbox 360 controller is all clicky and gunky now!

 

[mongey]

really want to get RDR2 , but I just know I don't have the time to play it as much as it needs to be played .

the changes to fast travel would piss me off though ,as a fast travel abuser

 

[Bloody_Inferno]

With all the Brown Alive Redemption 2 promos, I just remembered I still have Blue Poo Atonement 1 ready to go but still barely started it. Investing time in the Green Spleen Submarine series may be a bit difficult for me at the moment, but I did swear to start it because Purple Monkey Dishwasher 1 and 2 as a whole does look like a beautiful series to play, flaws and bugs and all.

But to undermine everything I said, I finished Kiwami and started with both Yakuza 6 and Ys VIII.

Thankfully Kiwami went through quickly. A solid remake, even if I didn't play the original, despite a few aesthetic flaws. I enjoyed the hell out of the Majima Everywhere mechanic. So much that I actively tried to hunt him down in every possible way (having him watching you read magazines was a nice surprise). My personal favorite was a throwaway gag with Majima yelling "I INVENTED THE TAX INCREASE". Not only does it nod to one of his sidequests in 0 (a game that actually does capture the spirit of Japan's excessive 'Economic Bubble' era), but also implies that Majima was the cause of the bubble burst that lead to the country's recession in the 90s. A cool historical attention to detail.

Though the mechanic lead to some problems. First, the character's story role makes this narratively wonky as hell. Second is the truckload of experience he showers you after beating his ass (which was often), making the game way too easy. I was full capped by chapter 10, and even the dreaded Jingu keeled over quickly thanks to a certain mid range dash/slap move. The final boss fell even faster thanks to all that lovely furniture lying around just waiting to be weaponized.



The transition from Kiwami to 6 is huge. I see how the Dragon engine has improved the aesthetics, Yakuza 6 is the most authentic representation of Japan in a game yet. They got the vending machines right (now even more product placements galore), and I can practically smell the food in the air, it made me miss Japan again. But this is the first Yakuza game that I've complained about loading times. I knew there was a rush to get the game out thus missed out on some refinement.

As for Ys VIII, it's scratching the itch left from Cold Steel and it's great. It's the same aesthetic right down to introducing characters, same engine and similar mechanics, though less Chrono Trigger and more Zelda, which is apt since Adol has been a bog standard silent RPG protagonist almost as long as Link has.

 

[wankerness]

With all the Brown Alive Redemption 2 promos, I just remembered I still have Blue Poo Atonement 1 ready to go but still barely started it. Investing time in the Green Spleen Submarine series may be a bit difficult for me at the moment, but I did swear to start it because Purple Monkey Dishwasher 1 and 2 as a whole does look like a beautiful series to play, flaws and bugs and all.

But to undermine everything I said, I finished Kiwami and started with both Yakuza 6 and Ys VIII.

Thankfully Kiwami went through quickly. A solid remake, even if I didn't play the original, despite a few aesthetic flaws. I enjoyed the hell out of the Majima Everywhere mechanic. So much that I actively tried to hunt him down in every possible way (having him watching you read magazines was a nice surprise). My personal favorite was a throwaway gag with Majima yelling "I INVENTED THE TAX INCREASE". Not only does it nod to one of his sidequests in 0 (a game that actually does capture the spirit of Japan's excessive 'Economic Bubble' era), but also implies that Majima was the cause of the bubble burst that lead to the country's recession in the 90s. A cool historical attention to detail.

Though the mechanic lead to some problems. First, the character's story role makes this narratively wonky as hell. Second is the truckload of experience he showers you after beating his ass (which was often), making the game way too easy. I was full capped by chapter 10, and even the dreaded Jingu keeled over quickly thanks to a certain mid range dash/slap move. The final boss fell even faster thanks to all that lovely furniture lying around just waiting to be weaponized.



The transition from Kiwami to 6 is huge. I see how the Dragon engine has improved the aesthetics, Yakuza 6 is the most authentic representation of Japan in a game yet. They got the vending machines right (now even more product placements galore), and I can practically smell the food in the air, it made me miss Japan again. But this is the first Yakuza game that I've complained about loading times. I knew there was a rush to get the game out thus missed out on some refinement.

As for Ys VIII, it's scratching the itch left from Cold Steel and it's great. It's the same aesthetic right down to introducing characters, same engine and similar mechanics, though less Chrono Trigger and more Zelda, which is apt since Adol has been a bog standard silent RPG protagonist almost as long as Link has.

I didn't notice Majima yelling about inventing the tax increase, that's awesome!

What difficulty did you have Kiwami on?? Jingu didn't kill me, but took FOREVER and I went through every single healing item I had and I got knocked down by bullets approximately 50 times before I managed to take out both of those guards the second time. So horrible.

Majima everywhere got incredibly tedious on the hard difficulty as when you were at max level, it would seriously take five minutes every time he jumped out, and I was trying to get every variant of him since there were trophies tied to them all (plus you had to fight him what, 50 times in the four main forms for the CP?). At some point during the post game I set the difficulty to easy just to avoid the annoyance cause then I could take him out in 30 seconds instead of a few minutes. The gulf was immense with amount of HP things had and the amount of danger he posed. His best form was either the ridiculous disco costume or when you go on a date with him as a woman.

I need to play VI again cause I read and saw a comparison of the map in VI to the red light district in Shinjuku, which was where I spent multiple hours walking around and had a hotel room right next to! I had no idea. I did recognize the format of the Don Quixote, but I didn't know that everything was a copy. A lot of it was practically indistinguishable from photos of the real thing in the comparison I saw.

RE: YS VIII, I'm ~40 hours in and I THINK I'm closing in on the end. It's been a lot of fun and the characters are charming in a FF VI/IX sort of way. The story is just as silly and nonsensical as an FF game, too, but it's less convoluted and difficult to follow. It's not going to compete with something like The Witcher 3, but it isn't meant to. The only thing missing from a story like an FF game is any romantic stuff, unless you count one particular tasteless subquest with a sidecharacter pulling off parts of her clothes that is so out of place that I laughed out loud. The main character is kind of a Link in terms of how much personality he has, but he does talk!

The biggest problem I've had with it are that the two characters with the "stabby" damage type are kind of obnoxious to play as, while the two with the "slash" are both great, but you need all three damage types to deal with all enemies you run across. All things being equal, the three-woman team is by far the best. I love the big fat green-haired farting guy, but he plays SO badly compared to the other one with crush damage. Not to mention, she's even more entertaining.

 

[Bloody_Inferno]

What difficulty did you have Kiwami on?? Jingu didn't kill me, but took FOREVER and I went through every single healing item I had and I got knocked down by bullets approximately 50 times before I managed to take out both of those guards the second time. So horrible.

Admittedly I was only playing on Normal so it wasn't as frustrating. Against Jingu, I did stick with mostly Dragon and Rush and mashed evade the second I started hearing grunts, the queue before gunfire. After blowing some of my weapons, I was a bit conservative with the combos until I got behind Jingu himself. The second the cronies' knives came out, I started abusing the Tiger Drop as much as possible then used the dash/slap heat move from a distance every chance I got any meter.

I found Jingu easier than the 2 Komakis in Yakuza 5, even on Easy mode, but then again, as Kiryu and Saejima, they weren't too bad. Akiyama and (especially) Shinada on the other hand...

Watching the recent Jimquisiton really reminded me of Yakuza 6 to an extent.

Regarding Ys, from what I've known about the series, it's pretty light hearted overall. They all usually start the same way where Adol gets caught stranded somewhere. I've never played any of them extensively so it's going to be a treat to do so now.

Another thing that's always stayed with Ys, is the awesome music. There are 2 different eras, so great for different reasons. Yuzo Koshiro who did Streets Of Rage and Actraiser series did the earlier music, and all the latter ones were done by Nihon Falcom, which personally I prefer as they're not afraid to get their shred/speed metal on as you've noticed on Ys VIII.


My natural inclination is to recommend the Legend Of Heroes: Trails series. But that depends on taste and your current view towards JRPGs. Same makers, same feel in theme and aesthetics (albeit more darker), extensive lore and a deep combat system (I tend to call it Chrono Trigger on steroids). Only problems are the story moves extremely slowly, some of the games haven't been released outside Japan and more importantly it's packed to the gills with every anime trope known to man, so that can get extremely cringeworthy at times.

 

[wankerness]

YS VIII's music is wildly catchy. The metal stuff reminds me of the SNES Mega Man X games and F-Zero X (none of which I've played since about 2000, so my memories might not be accurate). It's not all good, but damn is it catchy and old-school, despite sounding like it's mostly played by actual musicians instead of midi tracks.

 

[synrgy]

RDR2, though I'm troubled a little bit because I haven't really done anything of merit yet, but the game says I'm nearing 20% completion, already. I've only done a few missions. I've mostly been exploring, hunting, dying, then re-loading my save from before dying. Barely a few hours in, really.

 

[mongey]

Finished Hyper light drifter. was shorter than I expected.I didn't collect all the beacon things , got 75% Id say .good game though. not as hard as I was expecting . Maybe Hollow Knight battle hardened me .last boss was surprisingly easy

so I re downloaded hollow knight .and another 6 or 7 tries beat soul warrior finally . I beefed up my magic strength with the charm and that helped allot I think . so back on the hollow knight train til it pisses me of again

 

[Bloody_Inferno]

After months of threatening to play Salt And Sanctuary, I've finally got it on sale and dived right into it... and got murdered by the obligatory impossible first boss. Then played forward and died again from another boss.

Yes, it's a Dark Souls clone alright. Right down to the find and replace Souls and Bonfires with Salts and Sanctuaries respectively. Right down to the dodge roll everything to death to the messed up hitboxes, to losing your Salt when you die... Actually, scratch that. Salt And Sanctuary IS Dark Souls. In 2D. So it's Dark Souls with Symphony Of The Night sprinkles, right down to getting flung across the screen from something as gentle as a flick in the ear. And I LOVE IT.

I've needed my Metroidvania fix and Salty Sancho quenches that beautifully.


I suppose I should get Castlevania Requiem too, even though I heard it's rather lazy and total lack of effort in the presentation side from Konami's end, which is unsurprising I guess.