MARREND'S PROFILE

The purpose of this thread is to track 2021 Misao nominations on a montly basis, and maybe throw a few notable games down for a basis of conversation.

Voting is now complete! The results are in this thread! Thanks to the winners, the nominees, and to those that participated!

January
Total nominations: 0
Notes/Events:
-Nominations closed due to being the voting period for 2020 Misaos
-Seasons 4 begins

Notable Games
-Blood & Grime (Best Game Profile, "Eye Candy" Award, Star Stealing Prince Award)
-The Disrupted Monarchs


February
Total nominations: 26 (+26)
Notes/Events:
-Seasons 4 ends
-Lonely Hearts Pixel Event begins
-Release Maker Birthday begins

Notable Games:
-Deer, You Are Being Hunted (Best Game Title, Year of the Deer)
-Legend of the Mystical Deer (Year of the Deer, Best Lawsuit Waiting to Happen, The Dark Souls of RMN)
-The Lady Puppet (Most Promising Demo)
-Sweet Middleground 4 (Summoner of Sounds, Best Game Profile, Best Event Game - Seasons 4)
-Decline (Summoner of Sounds)
-Purgatory 2 (Best Non-English Game)
-Epic Wings 2 (Sleeping Beetle Ninja)
-The Morning Star
-Fatal Runtime


March
Total nominations: 65 (+39)
Notes/Events:
-Release Maker Birthday ends

Notable Games:
-Yume Wheeky (Year of Deer, Best Game Title, Punniest Game Alive)
-A Thief's Voyage (Sleeping Beetle Ninja)
-Errevale Fall (Star Stealing Prince Award, Sleeping Beetle Ninja, Best Event Game - Release Maker Birthday)
-Cave Adventure R
-Legacy
-Succubus Shop
-Meteo Chronicles


April
Total nominations: 74 (+9)
Notes/Events:
-Lonely Hearts Pixel Event ends(?)
-1.44 Floppy Disk event begins/ends (Liberty's playlist)

Notable Games:
-Door of Shadows (Most Promising Demo)
-Super Mario Death Row (Best Lawsuit Waiting to Happen)
-AWE VS OZZY: The Game (Best Short Game, Punniest Game Alive)
-A Vacation in Nebula ("Eye Candy" Award, Best Short Game Award)
-Detective WaKa (Best Game Profile, Best Short Game Award, Punniest Game Alive, Best Event Game - 1.44 Floppy Disk event)
-Unchained ("Eye Candy" Award)
-Oh No! It's My Crazy Ex-Girlfriend! (Best Short Game Award)
-Unbit (The "How the Hell Did They Do That?" Award)
-Our Dark Heart (Most Promising Demo, Best Eye Candy, Excellence in Narrative)
-Villain
-Magic Quest
-HYPER DIGGER
-Tesseract Quest
-The Lonely League
-Too Impatient
-Dread the Rabbit
-Abdogtion


May
Total nominations: 88 (+14)
Notes/Events:
-Mapdaptation begins/ends

Notable Games:
-Final Fantasy Legend 3 Remake (Best Lawsuit Waiting to Happen)
-Castlevanina - The Lost Belmont (Best Lawsuit Waiting to Happen)
-Darkest Dreams Remake (Sleeping Beetle Ninja)
-Forget-me-Not (Sleeping Beetle Ninja)
-Placebo Love (Best Commercial Game)
-The Dungeons of Mysteria (Best Commercial Game)
-Carpentry Story
-ChkenQuest 2K3 - Rise of the Chimkin


June
Total nominations: 93 (+5)
Notes/Events:
-RMNs 14th Birthday
-Fuck Pride, Here's Some Gay

Notible Games:
-Everlasting Journey ("Everlasting Journey" Award)
-Rejection - An RMN Birthday Game (Punniest Game Alive)
-The Bloodlust Curse of Dracula (Best Lawsuit Waiting to Happen)
-Alamari


July
Total nominations: 103 (+10)
Notes/Events:
-Fuck Pride, Here's Some Gay
-Gamepage Glories

Notable Games:
-Starless Umbra (Best Commercial Game, Most Promising Demo)
-None Pizza with Left Beef: Chapter 2 (Best Game Profile, Best in Positive Diversity, Best Event Game - Fuck Pride, here's some gay)
-Copper Odyssey (Best Commercial Game)
-Forest Star


August
Total Nominations: 119 (+16)
Notes/Events:
-Theme Roulette 4 (Liberty's playlist)

Notible Games:
-Brigida
-EXCALIBURIAN!!
-Tales of Yuria - Mausoleum of the Gods
-Wizard Kings
-Soma Union


September
Total Nominations: 157 (+38)
Notes/Events:
-No events this month

Notable Games:
-Triple Triad - Tornament of the Elements (Best Lawsuit Waiting to Happen)
-Chicken Blood (Best Short Game, Punniest Game Alive, Best Event Game - Theme Roulette 4)
-Wild Garden Mystery Dungeon (Year of the Deer)
-Uchioniko MZ (108% self-promotion pick)


October
Total Nominations: 179 (+22)
Notes/Events:
-Commonplace Book (Mirak's playlist)

Notable Games:
-Divided Reigns (Best Commercial Game)
-Beetle Ninja 2 (Sleeping Beetle Ninja)
-The Monastery
-Keeper of the Fog
-Rituals
-Deluge
-Lost Colossus
-Forgotten Water's Silent Voice
-witch.rpg
-Notes From Province


November
Total Nominations: 273 (+94)
Notes/Events:
-Nomination November

Notable Games:
-Draug's Resurrection (Not Dead Yet)
-Nihilo


December
Total Nominations: 419 (+146)
Notes/Events:
-Secret Santa
-Jingle Jangle Jam

Notable Games:
-RMN Holiday Calendar

So far, I've done LPs of games I've played numerous times. I might not recall every single detail correctly, but, the fact remains that there are things to remember. However, this time, I'm going in completely new and fresh. I have no idea what I'm doing, what's ahead, or what the consequences of my choices are. The game in question is...


...The Outer Worlds!

I think it was last year that Fallout 76 released. The hype it built! Of finally having a Fallout MMO! To be able to play Fallout with friends! To say the least, the game had issues. Perhaps it says something about the AAA industry that it was expected that some bugs would persist past the Q&A department. Perhaps there was pressure from the public to release the game before it was ready? Maybe it was from the higher ups in corporate? I don't know. All I really know is that the game launched, and was largely considered a buggy mess. Couple that with reports of mold detected in the helmets of certain Collector's Edition bundles, plus the debacle of the Fallout 1st subscription service, the game's issues were compounded upon. It drew a lot of hate, and, if you excuse the pun, fallout from some of it's fanbase.

At some point, enter Obsidian, and their offering of The Outer Worlds. They took what they learned/knew from working on Fallout: New Vegas, and put their own spin on it. Obsidian's timing couldn't haven been better. To those suffering from Fallout 76's bugs, and/or the obviously-aging engine of Fallout 4, it was the breath of fresh air a number of Fallout fans wanted/needed.

Going a bit back to Fallout, game I mostly recently played in that series was Fallout: New Vegas on PS3. Even then, I didn't get very far. Still, Fallout 3 was among the first games I had on that console, and played it to completion even if only once. Post-apocalyptic games in general kinda feel off my radar entirely after Wasteland 2. I loved that the game's major characters included the default party members from the original, and gave them personalities, as a kind of callback. Still, just something about it seemed off, and I quit playing at some point. I haven't really looked back since, for good or ill.

If I am to be perfectly honest, though, The Outer Worlds probably wouldn't have been on my radar at all were it not for a round-table discussion of the game by AngryJoe. If nothing else, the skit at the beginning of the video is downright hilarious, go watch it.


This is were I usually say that the game will be hacked, or otherwise use cheat codes. Not to mention a playlist where I grab tracks from. This is not the case here. I'm playing it straight, and I'd rather experience the music first-hand before considering fetching a playlist. That aside, I would welcome commentary on my bad decisions in-game, or other commentary about the game in general!

Table of contents
Session 1 - Old Unreliable
Session 2 - The edge of Edgewater
Session 3 - Meeting at the botanical lab
Session 4 - Takin' care of business
Session 5 - Archive Trap
Session 6 - Choice of evils lie before my feet! Retreat! Retreat! Retreat!
Session 7 - A choice made; a system to explore
Session 8 - Impounded at the Groundbreaker
Session 9 - Outer Worlds becomes open-world
Session 10 - Takin' care of business, my way
Session 11 - Completing all the quests, and then some!
Session 12 - Side-questing in Denerim Stellar Bay, part 37
Session 13 - Mopping up messes on Monarch
Session 14 - Ripples of the Space-Crime Continuum
Session 15 - Finally off of Monarch!
Session 16 - But I was just goddamn THERE!?
Session 17 - Byzantium, the Golden City
Session 18 - A Hope skips into the heart of Man
Session 19 - Freeing Phineas, and the final send-off

Well, it's decided. I originally didn't think it was worth doing an LP of this particular game. However, as you can see, here I am again. This thread's game is quite possibly my favorite game of all time...


...Heroes of Might and Magic 2 - The Succession Wars. I first got this game new and for the DOS platform back in 1996. There was no question I would get it. My friends (at the time) were pretty avid about the original Heroes, and we played it over hot seat at my then-house quite a bit over the summer of '95. We did similarly with this game too, so, like the World of Xeen LP, a bit of a trip down memory lane here.

The original Heroes of Might and Magic - A Strategic Quest, while certainly a spin-off of the main-line series, was something of a spiritual successor of a game New World Computing released in 1990 called King's Bounty. NWC managed two Heroes games before being acquired by 3DO. Likewise, 3DO managed two games before the Might and Magic license was sold to Ubisoft, who still retain the rights to the license as of this writing. To date, Ubisoft has made three games in the Heroes series.

With Heroes 2, the graphics got a serious overhaul, which was desperately needed. The unit graphics in the original Heroes is what I would call "cartoony". Spriters-resource provides ample examples of what I'm talking about. The battlefield was expanded, though, heroes are still limited to having up to five unit stacks in their army. New to this game, and games in the series going forward (as far as I'm aware) are secondary skills. Some skills were created to emulate the benefit of having a certain type from the original game. Such as Leadership (morale bonus) for Knights, Pathfinding (terrain movement penalty reduction) for Barbarians, Navigation (extra movement on water) for Sorceresses, and Scouting (the visual range of the hero increases) for Warlocks. Two factions were also included into the mix as well, Wizards and Necromancers, making the roster of possible heroes to hire expand greatly.

The original game used various characters, usually NPCs, from the main-line series for it's heroes (hense the title!) and this game throws a few more familiar faces in our direction. However, there are, however, a few original characters thrown into the mix that have no such background, as it were.

This LP will go through the Archibald campaign first, then the cannonical Roland campaign. I'll probably do one map per session. Naturally, I will be using Jack Hartman's Universal Game Editor, and David Melason's quite exhaustive (if not as complete for my taste) module for the game.

Music-wise, I will pull tracks from this playlist, with the sub-note that the original Succession Wars town tracks will be pulled from this playlist. Though, I will also provide the town tracks from the expansion, Price of Loyalty because most of them are better in my opinion.

Table of Contents:

• Archibald's Campaign

Session 1 - Scenario 1: First Blood
Session 2 - Secnario 2: Barbarian Wars
Session 3 - Scenario 3: Necromancers
Session 4 - Scenario 5: Turning Point
Session 5 - Scenario 6: Rebellion
Session 6 - Scenario 8: Country Lords
Session 7 - Scenario 10: Greater Glory
Session 8 - Scenario 11: Apocalypse

• Roland's Campaign

Session 9 - Scenario 1: Force of Arms
Session 10 - Scenario 2: Annexation
Session 11 - Scenario 4: Carator Mines
Session 12 - Scenario 5: Turning Point and Scenario 6: Defender
Session 13 - Scenario 7: The Gauntlet
Session 14 - Scenario 9: Corlagon's Defense
Session 15 - Scenario 10: Final Justice

I noticed a discussion on Discord concerning this. Be that as it may, attempting to sort games by total downloads, and no other filter, seems to generate a "system is down" page after maybe a minute of load-time.

There's currently a few workarounds for this. One is to apply at least one other filter to the search. Such as narrowing by engine, or maybe a minimum rating of 0.5, or whatever. Checking the "Download Available" checkbox seems to make the first page load (I have not tried other pages), though it still seems to take about a minute of load-time.

Perhaps a little earlier than expected, but, we have saved, quite arguably, the best game in the Suikoden series for the last.


This was not at all planned! It just kinda came out that way?

Er, anyway, there's a lot of features that start in this game that we (generally speaking) see going forward in the series. Characters can to have up to three Runes attached to them at any given time. Shops in the headquarters grant access to all recruits that can be in-party, not just whoever happens to be in the party at the time. Players can sprint without needing a Holy Rune. Though, future games, being on the PS2, don't really use that feature, as running seems to be the default action for d-pad control from what I've noticed. There might be a toggle-option in Suikoden 5, but, I don't recall.

As before, I'm aiming for the 108 bonus, and generally best ending possible with this play-through. Questions and/or comments are welcome, as always.

Table of Contents
Session 1 - There are Highland gentlemen, and there are Highland gentlemen...
Session 2 - Barn Fort burning
Session 3 - Let's Muse over this attack, shall we?
Session 4 - This is where we start being Suiko-screwed
Session 5 - And we got trouble! Right here in Two River City!
Session 6 - Green Hell Zone, Act 1
Session 7 - Knights of the Round Table Matilda
Session 8 - The King has died! Long live the King!
Session 9 - Wampire Veekly
Session 10 - The war battles to end all war battles
Session 11 - The 108% perfect ending