What game are you playing?

[rokket2005]

I'll have to revisit the Xenosaga games at some point, especially now that feeling that Takahashi has certainly left an impression with Nihon Falcom on the Trails games. Though that'll also mean I'll have to replay Xenosaga 2 and that sucked for a myriad of reasons.

Yeah, I've heard a lot of people dog on the second game for a myriad of reasons from redesigns, budget constraints, Jr. being the main character etc. There are also people that have hated on XC2 for the past five years, and it's my favorite game of all time, so I don't trust anyone else's opinions on video games.
I haven't played Coldsteel, but from what I've heard there is more mech stuff involved than just Pater-Mater. Also from what I've seen from Kuro it seems like XC3 might've taken a few cues from Falcom in terms of XC3s' Ouroboros forms, but how much of that was designed and already in place by the time Kuro came out is questionable. Probably most of it with the way that Takahashi constructs his narratives over several games.

 

[Bloody_Inferno]

Yeah, I've heard a lot of people dog on the second game for a myriad of reasons from redesigns, budget constraints, Jr. being the main character etc. There are also people that have hated on XC2 for the past five years, and it's my favorite game of all time, so I don't trust anyone else's opinions on video games.
I haven't played Coldsteel, but from what I've heard there is more mech stuff involved than just Pater-Mater. Also from what I've seen from Kuro it seems like XC3 might've taken a few cues from Falcom in terms of XC3s' Ouroboros forms, but how much of that was designed and already in place by the time Kuro came out is questionable. Probably most of it with the way that Takahashi constructs his narratives over several games.

One of the biggest blows that Xenosaga 2 copped was the loss of writer (and Takahashi's wife) Soraya Saga, who's contributions were just as important as Takahashi's. She's still credited, but a lot of changes made to her drafters resulted in her exit in less than amicable terms. Mitsuda didn't come back either due to disagreements with Namco, which hurts personally since Ep1 soundtrack is my favorite album of all time. Yuki Kajiura's songs were great, but she was limited to event tracks while Shinji Hirose fell asleep and filled most of the game with stock music.

I won't spoil much of Trails post Zero, but you've heard right. Pater Mater is a big hint of what's to come and will start to show even before you start the Erebonia arc. A lot of concepts with the DG Cult and gnosis tablets are definitely from the same Nietzche and Jung sources that Takahashi and Saga were fascinated and drawing from. It's hard not to spoil anything Trails related. I've already ruined 2 important characters in the Calvard arc.

Speaking of Xenoblade, I'm back to soldiering on XC2, but the constant barrage of tutorials is slowing me down significantly. I don't remember XC1 being this bad.

 

[rokket2005]

Where are you at if you don't mind me asking? Aside from one tutorial fairly late game, most of them wrap up right around the end of chapter 3. I don't remember there being any tutorials in xc1, cause it's just it's press left or right and the b button. XC2s combat is much deeper, and there's stuff that the game just flat out doesn't tell you that you're left to parse on your own.

 

[Bloody_Inferno]

Where are you at if you don't mind me asking? Aside from one tutorial fairly late game, most of them wrap up right around the end of chapter 3. I don't remember there being any tutorials in xc1, cause it's just it's press left or right and the b button. XC2s combat is much deeper, and there's stuff that the game just flat out doesn't tell you that you're left to parse on your own.

I'm embarrased to admit I'm still in Torigoth and got distracted by a sidequest or 3. I jumped off it early just to get Trails from Zero off my chest.

 

[rokket2005]

I probably spent 15- hours running around Gormott on my first playthrough too. It's a nice area to get lost in.

 

[Bloody_Inferno]

I haven't played any of the Coldsteels yet either. III was actually the first game I bought in the series knowing full well there were a bunch of other games I was supposed to play first and I'm so glad that I started from the beginning. I've seen so many people start with Zero since it just got it's official localization and I want to slap all those people across the face. They're not going to have a god damn clue what's going on through the whole second half of Zero.

Just noticed this post...

Even if I will 'reluctantly' say that Zero is a decent gateway, just as Cold Steel 1, I agree that the impact of the second half becomes a hell of a lot more meaningful after playing the 3 Sky games. Hell, most of us who started with Cold Steel fell victim already in the second game throwing a massive left turn after what feels like the final climax. And Falcom CEO going around stating Cold Steel 3 is a good gateway during press for it's release... only from his marketing perspective to give incentive to new plays to buy all the games, yes. But not in a way when telling people getting into MCU to start on Infinity War.

But to be fair, these games have always been troubled by localisation delays. Even as far back as Sky SC, just imagine the wait between the 2 games after that damn cliffhanger. The Crossbell games that took 12 years to be officially localised, and even NISA just got the fan translation from The Geofront guys. That is a cool story though. And it does take an eternity to translate In Search Of Lost Time quantities of dialogue.

 

[p0ke]

Played some more Cyberpunk 2077 yesterday and I gotta say, IMHO it's absolutely worth all the hype. At least now, after all the updates and with the next-gen version. Very immersive, looks great and the plot's interesting so far too.

 

[MFB]

Grinding out more GOW:R trophies, took out half the berserkers, ended last night with the duo in Svartalfheim at the mines and those fucks are tricky. I think one got a power up or becomes more aggro when the first dies, because I thought I'd coast once I was down to him.

Amulet is fully upgraded so I have addl. damage when over 75% health, addl. rage based off my defense (super high) along with maxed out armor/BoC/DS but surprisingly not my axe?

Have more money than I know what to do with (thanks wishing well) so I've been maxing out random gear and seeing if there's any reason to switch. So far, no. Might finish the Muspelheim challenges tomorrow, the first of the BIG arena ones was a blast (99 enemies total, only took about a dozen hits) and maybe try to finish another Berserker or two.

 

[MrBouleDeBowling]

I never played Cuphead before but with the DLC and the Netflix cartoon it made headlines again so I gave it a go. I don't know what the hell I was thinking, it absolutely lives up to its reputation and I was never that good at videogames. A true fucking challenge for my ADHD brain. After a lot of practice and dying an embarassing number of times, I finally managed to beat the main game.

Now I'm getting started with the DLC. Wish me good luck!

 

[bastardbullet]

Yeah, I’m going to have to wait with that one. Early reviews suggest there are a ton of one-hit kills that require perfectly timed dodges, and the game is not great at teaching you how the timings work, every time you die you have to watch a lengthy unskippable gruesome cutscene of your character dying, and the problem is compounded by frame rate issues making your timing off. I guess it plays better in performance mode (which I’d think would always be what people choose on every game, but what do I know?!).

I didn't really felt the need to jump over the performance mode at all, not sure why but it seemed all good to me. Dodge mechanism is a bit weird & wild for most, i get it but again i've had no issues.

One thing drove me crazy was somewhere at the beginning, i sold an item without thinking twice and regretted it. So i just wanted to return where i manually saved the game which was right before the last autosave. F*ck me i'll never do that; the game literally punished the hell out of me for it. Creatures jumping from everywhere with an imbossible combat level which cost me a good 45-50 minutes of an inferno to catch up with where i was before. Not sure is it really a thing but, i suggest you not to go back and forth in between the checkpoints like i did.

 

[gabito]

Sitll playing Death Stranding.

I still can't decide if I like it or not... the game says I've been playing 17 hours, and I'm still on chapter 3. I don't know if I spent that much time playing, but I've read every email and data file the game sent me, and maybe I left the console on while I was doing something else, so it may be true...

The amount of info and tips the game throws at you is overwhelming, so I disabled that at some point. Consequently, I don't know what the fuck I'm doing most of the time It can be pretty annoying, and some level of handholding in a Hideo Kojima game is pretty common, but the game interrupts anything you're doing all the time... and it still can be confusing.

The UI / UX is kind of bad. And you spend a lot of time micromanaging stuff, so there's that.

Stealth / combat missions are what you can expect from a Hideo Kojima game. Very MGSV-like.

Supposedly things pick up story and gameplay-wise after chapter 3, so we'll see. When it's about a Hideo Kojima game I can be pretty biased, so I guess I'll end up liking the game no matter what

 

[wankerness]

Grinding out more GOW:R trophies, took out half the berserkers, ended last night with the duo in Svartalfheim at the mines and those fucks are tricky. I think one got a power up or becomes more aggro when the first dies, because I thought I'd coast once I was down to him.

Amulet is fully upgraded so I have addl. damage when over 75% health, addl. rage based off my defense (super high) along with maxed out armor/BoC/DS but surprisingly not my axe?

Have more money than I know what to do with (thanks wishing well) so I've been maxing out random gear and seeing if there's any reason to switch. So far, no. Might finish the Muspelheim challenges tomorrow, the first of the BIG arena ones was a blast (99 enemies total, only took about a dozen hits) and maybe try to finish another Berserker or two.

The muspelheim challenges are really tedious since you have to redo the easy ones over and over in different orders to unlock different "final challenges." They aren't at all hard, though.

The berserker trio is the worst thing in the game IMO. Not sure if it would have been a lot easier with that tank setup I ended up using on the king and final final boss, though. The duo was nowhere close to as annoying.

 

[MFB]

The muspelheim challenges are really tedious since you have to redo the easy ones over and over in different orders to unlock different "final challenges." They aren't at all hard, though.

The berserker trio is the worst thing in the game IMO. Not sure if it would have been a lot easier with that tank setup I ended up using on the king and final final boss, though. The duo was nowhere close to as annoying.

I ran into them and tried once, got the sisters to half health but the main one was just absolutely hammering me during those attacks anyway, so I just took the L and said I'll come back to it. I was a bit confused on the changes to the Crucible, like, rehashing arenas in different orders? Just make it shorter and be done with it, that's just weird gatekeeping.

I also found the other boss you're referencing, promptly got my shit packed by them and said much like the Berserker trio, I'll come back.

 

[TedEH]

Sitll playing Death Stranding.

I feel like I'm having a pretty different experience hah. Only on chapter 2, but the game feels almost kinda casual. Lots of just running around. No real time pressure, even though the UI kind of implies there is. Random music popping up during quiet times is pretty welcome. It's almost got that BotW "I just want to wander for a while" thing going on. I think I've gotten an "S" rank on every delivery/mission so far, and it feels almost like the game is setting up for some kind of meta joke about the rank being meaningless and you get S every time or something.

 

[gabito]

I feel like I'm having a pretty different experience hah. Only on chapter 2, but the game feels almost kinda casual. Lots of just running around. No real time pressure, even though the UI kind of implies there is. Random music popping up during quiet times is pretty welcome. It's almost got that BotW "I just want to wander for a while" thing going on. I think I've gotten an "S" rank on every delivery/mission so far, and it feels almost like the game is setting up for some kind of meta joke about the rank being meaningless and you get S every time or something.

Yeah, I got an S on every mission too, and I'm sure I'm not good at the game

Or maybe I am?

The BT encounters made me feel kind of anxious at first, but after I got the hang of it (and hematic grenades) not anymore. Mule encounters are more fun so far, they can be chaotic.

I want more cutscenes!

 

[TedEH]

I haven't figured out the grenades yet....
It does seem like the presentation implies there's more danger to BTs than there really is. I've gotten pretty close to them and managed to get away every time.

 

[gabito]

I haven't figured out the grenades yet....
It does seem like the presentation implies there's more danger to BTs than there really is. I've gotten pretty close to them and managed to get away every time.

I still don't know if the can see you, or only hear you? They got me a few times, but I don't know why (I mean, I fell or I was being noisy, but still...). But yeah, it's not the end of the world.

 

[Nicki]

I'll have to revisit the Xenosaga games at some point, especially now that feeling that Takahashi has certainly left an impression with Nihon Falcom on the Trails games. Though that'll also mean I'll have to replay Xenosaga 2 and that sucked for a myriad of reasons.

Sorry, this interested me because

1. I'm going through Trails of Cold Steel 2 atm (though it's pissing me off because it won't fucking end)
2. I'm not sure what connection to Takahashi there is outside of the work he did on the first Legend of Heroes game. I can't find any reference to him on any of the Trails games.

You mind elaborating on the connection?

 

[Bloody_Inferno]

Sorry, this interested me because

1. I'm going through Trails of Cold Steel 2 atm (though it's pissing me off because it won't fucking end)
2. I'm not sure what connection to Takahashi there is outside of the work he did on the first Legend of Heroes game. I can't find any reference to him on any of the Trails games.

You mind elaborating on the connection?

I may be overstating it, but Takahashi's fascination with mecha (and all the applied game mechanics) are definitely in the Trails games. He's been known to have Gundam figures all over his desk during his Square years, maybe even as far as his early time in Falcom.

The other is anything to do with religious themes, like the Septian Church, Gnosticism (there's a theme in Zero), but they're not fully in depth in the Trails games.

 

[AwakenTheSkies]

Played and finished a horror game called SOMA. I enjoyed it but it was overhyped for me with the reviews calling it a masterpiece and the "overwhelmingly positive" status on Steam. I didn't find it super mind blowing like the reviews would say, I don't know if the ending was supposed to be unexpected but the game already tells you what's going to happen way before the end. I didn't find myself surprised or shocked. But without the overhype or very high expectations it's really a good game and I enjoyed learning all about it's world.