Yakoob on 25/1/2025 at 08:40
Just completed Metaphor: ReFantazio, and the ending succinctly shows the corruption in modern democracy
> New king is literally a nepobaby
> Doesn't even win popular vote (comes in 2nd, kills opponent to be #1)
> Immediately appoints all his close friends to high level roles
> After two years, abdicates his duty to fuck off and travel (coughcancuncough)
> Takes his whole cabinet with him so no one is left to rule the country
GG, 10/10 social commentary
Sulphur on 26/1/2025 at 11:20
Since I don't wanna be spoiled, is that serious or ironic or both?
Meanwhile, fresh off finishing up Technobabylon, I decided to see what else was happening in the old point and click adventure game arena. Turns out, Dave Gilbert's making a new game called Old Skies, and it has a demo.
So I played it. It's pretty good. You play a time traveller from the future, Fia, who's chaperoning an old doctor around the quaint old-timey environs of Manhattan's East Village in 2024. He wants to visit an old diner, and eat some burgers there. Except, blast it, you've zapped into a secure location where the door's been padlocked from the outside.
So yeah, it's an Adventure Game, all right. The puzzles in the demo are pretty easy, and it follows the design philosophy of not overwhelming you with information or locations to visit. You get a gradual dripfeed of things you need to know and places you need to go, which slightly increase in complexity over time. One of the neat conceits here is, since you're from the future, you can look up people's lives and histories in your archives and apply that information to your current situation. Apart from this there's the usual mix of walking, talking, and puzzle solving - what more could you want?
The demo lasts about 10-20 minutes, and is pleasantly paced. There's obviously more to the story than I wrote above, but the demo's short enough that I think you'll like finding out what it's really about for yourself. I got a background buzz of satisfaction from progressing the story/puzzles, though YMMV on that. It's nicely written enough that the ending was both a small twist but also not because you could tell why and how it was coming, and I enjoyed that. The subtext about history being unkind and uncaring towards normal people has always been a valid concern.
While playing Technobabylon, I thought the visuals and sounds were nice, but not to the level I'd call them out seprately. Old Skies makes one major departure from other Wadjet Eye games - it no longer features pixel art from Ben Chandler like ye olde LucasArts classics. This time, the character animation is rotoscoped and the background art is gorgeous high res art (no doubt enabled by the new version of Adventure Game Studio they're using), both of which are from Ben Chandler. He's painted East Village in delicate autumnal sunset hues, dousing much of it with golds and russets and pinks. It's properly lovely. The music's from Blackwell old hand Thomas Regin, and if you liked his Blackwell work, you'll probably smile the moment you hear the smokey jazz stylings come out - needless to say, it's all very good.
It's been cooking for a while, but the release is set for 'Spring 2025', so if the whole entire world hasn't burned down by then, I might... add it to my backlog. \o/
Yakoob on 27/1/2025 at 03:57
Quote Posted by Sulphur
Since I don't wanna be spoiled, is that serious or ironic or both?
Ironic, but not in a bad way.
If you want my fuller views on the game, I am pretty mixed about it. I like the deeper and high-level themes it was going for, and I think it does some cool things to subvert expectations and do some meta-moments (ala Bioshock (totally called it 10hrs in lol). As a whole, it has a lot of cool ideas done well and it's interesting to talk about and dissect. But on the micro, moment-to-moment level...
I feel those strong themes are fairly diluted to make room for all the typical JRPG tropes, so the actual cool points come out a bit hamfisted. The story tends to also get too convoluted for its own good and is, frankly, just badly paced (think 10hrs of gameplay followed by 3hrs of cutscenes with multiple plot-twists that immediately undo each other).
I know that it won the award for best narrative, but to be frank, I thought the writing was overall kinda eh (despite the fantastic presentation). It just repeats and over-explains itself (wouldn't want player missing the subtle themes!!) and your companions, while perfectly likable, are entirely 1-dimensional and don't really grow or develop as characters. They all start being essentially "perfect" and virtuous, and end up being perfect and virtuous. That might arguably be tied to some of the end-game themes, but I felt it distinctly lacked any sort of "hero's journey" for any of them (or if it happened, it happened off-screen like Heismay or Euph, or side-stories that didn't really impact the main plot in any way, like Strolh or Hulkenberg).
The gameplay overall is fun. It's your standard Job System but with a pretty good turn mechanic where you can sort of "game" weaknesses to try to get more moves in, which is surprisingly fun to use. The calendar system is good too for keeping you on track and make some choices how to use your time best. The social bonds were enjoyable to progress and get new skills from, but halfway thru the game, I started skipping the dialogues. The choices didn't particularly matter and I realized I just wasn't invested in any of the characters (probably because they lacked depth, as I mentioned before)
Overall, I probably would have loved it if I were 15 and I'm suffering a bit from "old man who played too many games" syndrome. Would I recommend it? If you like JRPGs or Persona games, definitely. If you're partial to it, the game is still interesting enough, but it's a very uneven experience IMHO.
nicked on 27/1/2025 at 07:12
Dark Souls Remastered.
Strangely enough, I'm finding it easier than I expected. I played the original many years ago, so there's a bit of familiarity there, but I think it also comes down to spending a chunk of last year playing Elden Ring. A lot of Dark Souls enemies are slow and predictable by comparison.
I have realised that I'm going to have to learn how to parry properly because holding my shield up constantly is giving me terrible RSI in my left index finger, so that's proving an interesting way to add challenge.
Sulphur on 27/1/2025 at 07:58
Quote Posted by Yakoob
Ironic, but not in a bad way.
Ah. I appreciate the rest of your thoughts on it, I think your criticism is entirely reasonable. Well-rounded characters aren't something gaming does well in general, so I suppose that was expected to a degree. It does sound like the complete package holds itself up and remains worthwhile despite the bugbears, but I'm in no hurry to get to it. I look forward to playing it at some future date.
Malf on 27/1/2025 at 09:51
So I've been rather pleasantly surprised this weekend.
While belatedly watching Civvie's Halloween video about Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, and him being incredibly effusive about it, he mentioned Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night being probably the only properly good successor to that kind of Castlevania game; effectively "Symphony of the Night, but with Blackjack and Hookers."
Now it's been sat in my GoG library for years, as I'd initially bounced off of it hard, thanks to the initial weapons and movement being really shit, and the pervy anime girl stuff it has going on.
But I thought I should maybe give it a second chance given Civvie's recommendation, and I've been pining for something Castlevania-like to play since finishing the most recent season of Castlevania: Nosturne on Netflix.
While my return to it initially reinforced all of the issues I had with it originally, I decided to persevere. And with the drop of a weapon that allowed me to move and attack at the same time, the game suddenly came alive and gripped my attention.
I'd never played Symphony of the Night, but I had played one of the DS games that had the same combination of Metroidvania exploration and RPG-style levelling, and I'd loved it. And this is giving me that exact same vibe, which is great.
I like classic Metroidvanias well enough, but in general, the linearity of them begins to annoy me over time. I don't mean linearity in the classic "one path through the entire game" sense, but rather the "frozen in amber" aspect these games have. You can visit different areas at different times in these games, but the weapons, end-point and puzzles generally remain static.
The random gear and ability to over-level to make problematic encounters easier in SotN-style games adds that little bit extra needed to keep me engaged.
So while the game still has the skeevy stuff going on with the representation of women, the game design and way it plays (after a certain point) are rock-solid and incredibly compelling. I'm rather sad I didn't persist with the game when it was initially released.
It's also solidified my belief that the Souls games are just SotN-type games, but in 3D. The gameplay loops are identical.
Sulphur on 27/1/2025 at 10:13
'Identical' is a very specific word to use there; I don't think that's right. The Souls games are on the surface similar to any metroidvania in that you have large areas to explore and push back the fog, so to speak, in a semi non-linear fashion. Apart from that, the Castlevanias I've played don't have a core loop fuelled by corpse runs for dropped XP, or bonfire checkpoints to gate progress and level up, or the 'punishing but fair' tagline that dominated the press when Demon's and Dark Souls came out.
Bloodstained's got that anime perviness that is unfortunate, but I don't recall it being as huge an issue as it is in, say, Danganronpa. What I played of it was redolent of a solid Castlevania spiritual successor, so it achieved that goal pretty handily, and I would say you're not missing out on much by not having played SotN yet, but it does also have one of the most well put-together soundtracks in video gaming history. I'd say play it for that, or listen to the soundtrack at the very least.
Thirith on 27/1/2025 at 10:24
Got my new computer (an 9800X3D), which makes for a very nice upgrade from my five-year-old 9900K. But I'm still in the middle of Thief: Shadows of the Metal Age, so I'll persist with that one before I get started on any of the newer hotness.
Malf on 27/1/2025 at 10:32
@Sulphur:
Sorry, yeah, probably being overly hyperbolic there. But the DNA is nonetheless very similar; and I'd say that this style of Castlevania-likes is closer to Souls than to Metroid.
There's another odd design choice which I actually find quite charming, while also being jarringly out of place.
Occasionally, you'll come across a monster design that sticks out by its sheer randomness. It's like a callback to the old 8-bit Manic Miner / Jeff Minter days when seemingly random things could be enemies in games. Like the lovingly modelled, rather large demon that just happens to look exactly like a miffed housecat, or the flying pigs, or the disembodied terrier heads.
Sulphur on 27/1/2025 at 10:44
Oh yeah, the random enemy designs are great, I enjoyed the fact that the game had no qualms being goofy whenever it felt like it, which was fairly often.
