WHAT VIDEOGAMES ARE YOU PLAYING RIGHT NOW?

Posts

Red_Nova
Sir Redd of Novus: He who made Prayer of the Faithless that one time, and that was pretty dang rad! :D
9192
Berseria is doing the unthinkable by retroactively making Zestiria's story cool.

I don't know how to process this.
Yellow Magic
Could I BE any more Chandler Bing from Friends (TM)?
3154
Oh gosh, do i need to finish Zestiria to fully appreciate Berseria? I quit a couple of hours into Zestiria because I got sick of 30 FPS....
author=Hexatona
author=Shinan
So I just randomly browsed this thread so I'm a bit late to the party but...

If you're going to skip anything skip Baldur's Gate.
REALLY!?

That's a pretty unexpected opinion. Can you elaborate on that for me?

Now I know Baldur's Gate is a beloved classic and all but it never really clicked for me. Part of it is because I'm not a fan of AD&D and part of it is just because I don't really like the systems in the game. And the writing is kinda bland. And it's just not very exciting. And linear. And a lot of things.

I played Pillars of Eternity last summer and I did finish it but I thought it was very much like BG both good and bad. I instantly recognized all the things I didn't like about BG in PoE. Now I still finished it and I still finished BG back in the days so the games clearly have some positive qualities. Though I mostly finished them because I exploited the systems (pro tip: Equip a ranged weapon and be slightly faster than your opponent, you can run away and chip at them basically forever, extra bonus if you have a character that can sneak because then you can resneak when you're far enough away and then do the bonus stealth damage on your first attack)


Now Arcanum on the other hand. Arcanum is not a game without its fault. It's prone to CTDs, it's turn-based/real-time hybrid is not great (in the end I only ever played in turn-based mode, don't even touch real-time) the systems are apparently easily broken. (that is there are builds in this game that will destroy everything)

But Arcanum has a unique steampunk setting with pretty great writing and conflicts. It really triggers the imagination with it's magic vs technology and also gameplaywise that thing is interesting where gadgets will misfire if you are too magically inclined and healing magic basically will do nothing if you're too technologically inclined. I also liked the skill system a lot (again I dislike AD&D because it basically doesn't have non-combat skills combined with the fact that I think AD&D combat is boring) and the possibilities in the magic system. It was probably also the first game I played with crafting and I think it was fairly well-implemented (after all it's been over ten years so there's that).

But yes Arcanum is also a broken game. But I'd much rather take the interesting but broken game over the by-the-numbers game that Baldur's Gate is. I personally think Arcanum belongs with Planescape Torment in the whole "really intersting setting" bit. Of course one problem might be that it's not nearly as pretty. The graphics are fairly lackluster (the BG and Planescape "handpainted" maps are so damn pretty). But Arcanum is one of my all-time favourite RPGs. With one of my all-time favourite Hub Cities (Tarant is so visually boring that you can actually get lost in the city. There's not very many rpg cities that feel that big :)

I just love Arcanum...
Craze
why would i heal when i could equip a morningstar
15150
Yellow Magic
Oh gosh, do i need to finish Zestiria to fully appreciate Berseria? I quit a couple of hours into Zestiria because I got sick of 30 FPS....

Fully appreciate? Yeah. To enjoy? I doubt it. Karsuman has been greatly enjoying it with just me shouting occasional Cool Facts(tm) about Zesty at him.

edit: i put bertha on hiatus for some reason??? i'm like 60 hours in, i should go finish it. i think i'm waiting for a long weekend or something though so that i can demolish it.

currently playing REDOUT which is an amazing anti-grav racing game, and Faeria which is a ccg strategy game. yeah. just look it up if that sounds at all appealing.

Red_Nova
Sir Redd of Novus: He who made Prayer of the Faithless that one time, and that was pretty dang rad! :D
9192
Berseria definitely stands on its own without any knowledge of Zestiria, so don't worry about being lost. Like Craze said, though, knowing Zestiria lore will give certain plot points a hell of a lot more impact than they would otherwise.

That being said, YM, don't you go anywhere. Stay right where you are and explain something to me:



.........excuse me?


there is a boss
*deep breath*
there is a boss with a move that can
*sweating*
with a move that can give itself
*panicked internal screaming*
that can give itself... extra turns?
.........
.........
.........
for free?!
lol smt

I like how it also uses that spell that iirc you can't protect yourself against
Craze
why would i heal when i could equip a morningstar
15150
post-snes smt was never about gameplay, it's always been about atmosphere. it does a great job with settings and atmosphere, but for some reason people always praise "it has elements and buffs!!!!" as the pinnacle of game design lol. devil survivor 2 was really good in all aspects, though
Hexatona
JESEUS MIMLLION SPOLERS
3702
author=Red_Nova
Berseria definitely stands on its own without any knowledge of Zestiria, so don't worry about being lost. Like Craze said, though, knowing Zestiria lore will give certain plot points a hell of a lot more impact than they would otherwise.

That being said, YM, don't you go anywhere. Stay right where you are and explain something to me:


.........excuse me?


there is a boss
*deep breath*
there is a boss with a move that can
*sweating*
with a move that can give itself
*panicked internal screaming*
that can give itself... extra turns?
.........
.........
.........
for free?!

I like how in Bravely Default my Final Party was basically a really broken SMT Boss. Immune to all elements, everyone acting four times a turn, Buffs out the wazoo, two damage dealers, one attacking MINIMUM 8 times, usually more like 12, with either drain blade or a blade on the boss' weakness, and the other one doing near max damage with minus strike, and who revives from death half the time.

The only reason the final boss took so long was because they kept restarting it, and I had to keep setting things up again.

Oh! And if I got in a pinch, a limit break that fully healed, revived, and gave full magic back.
Yellow Magic
Could I BE any more Chandler Bing from Friends (TM)?
3154
Thanks for that Craze and Red_Nova. I feel a bit more at ease now.

@Red: LOL that's SMT for you IIRC most bosses in Nocturne have either Beast Eye (+2 turns) or Dragon Eye (+4 Turns).

And I agree with Craze: SMT Nocturne is one of my favourite games ever but that's definitely NOT because of the gameplay. Having said that, I do think the bosses in Digital Devil Saga 1/2 were pretty balanced.
Hexatona
JESEUS MIMLLION SPOLERS
3702
author=Shinan
author=Hexatona
author=Shinan
So I just randomly browsed this thread so I'm a bit late to the party but...

If you're going to skip anything skip Baldur's Gate.
REALLY!?

That's a pretty unexpected opinion. Can you elaborate on that for me?
Now I know Baldur's Gate is a beloved classic and all but it never really clicked for me. Part of it is because I'm not a fan of AD&D and part of it is just because I don't really like the systems in the game. And the writing is kinda bland. And it's just not very exciting. And linear. And a lot of things.

I played Pillars of Eternity last summer and I did finish it but I thought it was very much like BG both good and bad. I instantly recognized all the things I didn't like about BG in PoE. Now I still finished it and I still finished BG back in the days so the games clearly have some positive qualities. Though I mostly finished them because I exploited the systems (pro tip: Equip a ranged weapon and be slightly faster than your opponent, you can run away and chip at them basically forever, extra bonus if you have a character that can sneak because then you can resneak when you're far enough away and then do the bonus stealth damage on your first attack)


Now Arcanum on the other hand. Arcanum is not a game without its fault. It's prone to CTDs, it's turn-based/real-time hybrid is not great (in the end I only ever played in turn-based mode, don't even touch real-time) the systems are apparently easily broken. (that is there are builds in this game that will destroy everything)

But Arcanum has a unique steampunk setting with pretty great writing and conflicts. It really triggers the imagination with it's magic vs technology and also gameplaywise that thing is interesting where gadgets will misfire if you are too magically inclined and healing magic basically will do nothing if you're too technologically inclined. I also liked the skill system a lot (again I dislike AD&D because it basically doesn't have non-combat skills combined with the fact that I think AD&D combat is boring) and the possibilities in the magic system. It was probably also the first game I played with crafting and I think it was fairly well-implemented (after all it's been over ten years so there's that).

But yes Arcanum is also a broken game. But I'd much rather take the interesting but broken game over the by-the-numbers game that Baldur's Gate is. I personally think Arcanum belongs with Planescape Torment in the whole "really intersting setting" bit. Of course one problem might be that it's not nearly as pretty. The graphics are fairly lackluster (the BG and Planescape "handpainted" maps are so damn pretty). But Arcanum is one of my all-time favourite RPGs. With one of my all-time favourite Hub Cities (Tarant is so visually boring that you can actually get lost in the city. There's not very many rpg cities that feel that big :)

I just love Arcanum...


I'll be honest - I think I'll end up agreeing with your assessment. I just feel like I can't abandon BG though. ON THE PLUS SIDE - I found the best thing ever to put into my BG game to make it all worthwhile.

I put this on, the mlp pack and the voice of rainbow dash is so put-upon and sassy that I can't help but love ordering her around. (plus you can put in your own portrait art)

"Oh, alright..." "yeah yeah, I'm going." "I wish I had somebody to do whatever I told them..." "Magic Smagic! ... Boo!" "Aaaallllrighty... Whaddya say we get outta creepy town..."
Craze
why would i heal when i could equip a morningstar
15150
yeah DDS is a cool series. i never beat it because the dungeons are soooo badddddd but it was pretty fair.
Red_Nova
Sir Redd of Novus: He who made Prayer of the Faithless that one time, and that was pretty dang rad! :D
9192
I've heard DDS is a good gateway drug for SMT games since there's no demon raising and fusing. Is that true?
Yellow Magic
Could I BE any more Chandler Bing from Friends (TM)?
3154
^Yeah, the characters you control turn into demons during battle and you can customise the skills they learn.
It is.
It is also incredibly balanced. And a really well-done game. It has however a fairly desolate atmosphere for a lot of it.

Similarily well work the Devil Survivor games on the DS, as the system in-combat is similar and spells too, and do fuse, but you have a very limited range of them and can get used to them, easier customization etc (you select spells to carry over fusing, unlike the trial and error of other parts).
I started with it and it's been a great gateway into the system.

Of course, Persona is also a way, the 3 n 4.
Fflo
Be careful ! I'm French
3650
I do play Tomodachi Life for 3DS.
Most of my islanders are fictive people. I've created a few Yu-Gi-Oh! islanders: (contents in French)


Shay Obsidian, from ARC-V. The anime version doesn't have a cap, and his outfit is more purple than blue.


Reginald Kastle aka Shark from Zexal. Sometimes it's hard to find a suitable haircut in the editor...


Jaden Yuki from GX.


And Yusei Fudo from 5D's.

There's a few other people here: the French President, Mrs. Merkel, Anna from Frozen, Clemont from Pokémon, Fran Drescher from The Nanny, and some French broadcasters. 63 Mii living in my game.
Hexatona
JESEUS MIMLLION SPOLERS
3702
Was not expecting to see Fran Drescher in that list!
Sailerius
did someone say angels
3214
As soon as Horizon: Zero Dawn started, I had a pretty good guess where the plot was going and there were two plot twists I predicted but they were so lame and cliché that I desperately hoped I was wrong. Nooope, they both just happened in fast succession.

The game is beautiful to look at, but God I wish there was a disable-the-story setting because the writing is excruciating.
I thought it was great. Just because you can see where the story is going doesn't mean it's a bad story. Well told > original.
Sailerius
did someone say angels
3214
My problem with it isn't that it's unoriginal but that it's ill-conceived and poorly-told. I also feel terrible for Alloy's VA; she normally does an amazing job and you can tell she's trying her damndest to bring this character to life, but not even someone as talented as her can artificially inject personality into this wooden, soulless husk of a character.
Nah, the only real problem I had with the storytelling direction was that there were some skips and bounds, especially when talking to people. That said, the story itself had a solid base (I got goosebumps, and teared up, a few times in different parts) but some of the implementation was clunky. That can't be helped when it comes to a game that has so many sidequests, though - there's always going to be a feeling of disconnection unless you do the main quest without stopping for sideline stuff. Just how it is with these kinds of games.

Even DA:I has that issue, I've been finding. I'm enjoying the game a lot but the main quest feels disjointed because there's always other things to do and see that draw you away from the main line.

It probably helped that I watched the H:ZD in an LP where the player actually kept most of the side-quest elements in livestreams and followed the main quest (mostly) with the youtube playlist. It still felt disconnected at times since she'd come back from questing and have a ton of new stuff just suddenly appear in the video versions, but the story itself unfolded a lot better.

(Besides, I think part of the issue with 'stiffness' was the character models/direction. They felt a bit off which made the characters feel a little lesser. I kinda wish they'd gone with a more stylistic approach to the graphics instead of aiming for realistic, since it would have allowed them to be a bit more free-flowing.)

I mean, I can see the faults that the game had fair enough, but the story itself was pretty solid, and the performances were good enough to me. Just some of the graphical expression was kinda glitchy/stiff and that made it feel a bit odd. I still enjoyed it quite a lot, though. If I had the money I'd buy the console just for the game.