Thirith on 23/1/2023 at 07:49
Yeah, Pentiment is one I want to play very soon, probably after finishing Shadow of the Tomb Raider.
Talking of which: whatever the game does wrong, it has some wondrously beautiful environments, especially the more puzzly bits. There's a pretty good Tomb Raider hiding in this one, but it is well hidden by the dreary writing and performances (I don't mind them trying to address some of the iffyness of the Lara Croft premise, but they do so in such dull ways) and all the concessions to modern gaming, even though they add little to nothing to the game and often make it more grating.
Malf on 23/1/2023 at 09:00
I need to get around to finishing Pentiment, but I dropped due to all the back-tracking I was doing because I was afraid to miss out on some vital clue.
It also feels very much like the conversation tree from an Obsidian game that has had the rest of the game stripped out. That's not necessarily a bad thing!
But the backtracking adds a lot of travel time between the good bits.
demagogue on 23/1/2023 at 17:11
I've been playing Pentiment for Aerothorn's Game Club, since that's the game for this month. I have opinions, but I've been posting them there. (I think anyone here'd be welcome to join the discussion if they wanted to, though I should probably ask them. It's all on a discord channel.)
Generally, the tone of it is anachronistic, which is so far the main thing limiting me getting too into it (considering it's main hook is being in that world). It's not that it's anachronistic per se; Kingdom Come was also anachronistic, but I still felt it was trying to be in that world in heart.
This game is set right in the heart of the Protestant Reformation on the eve of that revolution (and the peasant's revolution). It's still a pre-enlightening society; you'd never just blurt out what you're actually thinking, and even when you want to, you bury it under a mountain of plausibly deniable suggestion. Nominalism itself, the idea that it's even possible belief and the real world might not perfectly overlap, hadn't fully crystallized as socially acceptable, like we think of totalitarian societies today. People pin you by what you say, and if it doesn't accord with accepted truths, you're a lunatic or a real danger that can't be tolerated; most things happening were whisper campaigns where you're looking over your shoulder to see who might overhear; and the printing press was a pretty radical innovation, where people were radicalized by the slightest innuendo. Whereas the tone of this is very confessional like our culture and I don't get that sense of real risk in the air about what I say to whom, or it's gamified.
Maybe I'm being too strict about it and I'll ease up as I get into it, but that's been one of my early reactions.
Sulphur on 23/1/2023 at 18:00
I think that's a pretty smart choice. It's one thing to want a simulation of that time, it's another thing to actually play something that alien if you're a member of the unwary gamer demographic. There's probably an entirely different sort of game to be had if it were that accurate to the prevailing societal mores of the time, a sort of atomised social stealth thing with unforgiving turns of the screw, but '16th century Protestant Reformation Pathologic' is an extremely hard sell, let alone Pentiment's more mainstream concessions towards being a mediaeval walk and talk game. The dichotomy between the time period and the treatment's better resolved if you see it as a story from the lens of today, with Andreas Maler being a stand-in for modern attitudes - at least, this is the implied context I get, as the game doesn't even give you options to be a stealth rebel, so its priorities must have lain elsewhere.
Tomi on 29/1/2023 at 02:23
I am currently playing Cultist Simulator. Or at least I was playing it for a while. Cultist Simulator is this card-based roguelike game that focuses on storytelling. I sort of really like what it's trying to be and I love the 1920's and Lovecraft vibes. The presentation is a bit bland; the cards aren't exactly beautiful to look at but I guess that they're at least somewhat practical. However, the game really fails at showing the player how to actually play it. I know that people often complain about too much handholding in modern gaming, but Cultist Simulator is like the complete opposite. The start of the game is fairly simple; there are a couple of cards on the table and you think you've got some vague idea of what to do with them. Fifteen minutes later the table is full of all sorts of cards and scary countdown timers, and you no longer know what any of them really do. Another fifteen minutes later you suddenly die because you've acquired too many Despair tokens or something. I couldn't figure out why that even happened.
Yeah, I'd probably learn to play the game if I spent a bit more time on it, and I'm fairly sure that there's an interesting game buried in there somewhere... But, since the theme and all the mystery were the only things in Cultist Simulator that really caught my attention within the first hour or so, I think I'll just move onto something else.
demagogue on 29/1/2023 at 03:20
The first thing to get about Cultist Simulator is that even understanding the game is basically the game.
In the big scheme of things, though, a full game can take over 10 hours. So I don't think it could have been designed much differently to have that kind of breadth than having you work it out as you go. I mean it's central to the character of the game. It's understandable why one wouldn't like it, but I think it's fair to say it should be true to what it wants to be, take it or leave it.
Tomi on 29/1/2023 at 05:01
Yeah, I suppose you're right. I think it's the somewhat bland visual style and the awkward UI that puts me off the most. That, and the game really does throw you in the deep end right away. Perhaps I'll give it another chance. Perhaps not. C'est la vie. :D
Malf on 29/1/2023 at 09:42
I really need to get back to Cultist Simulator at some point, but every time I think about it, I'm immediately put off when I remember that the game's card management is minimal, and that it actively breaks any other management system you try to impose on it.
That, and even when I think I'm doing well, my whole run can be brought down by something that just feels random and unfair.
But contrary to Tomi, I actually really like the lo-fi cards and the air of mysticism they bring to the game. It allows the imagination to fill in the gaps.
It just falls a little to far to the "Unfair" side of the difficulty scale, and despite putting plenty of hours into it, I've never had a "successful" run.
WingedKagouti on 29/1/2023 at 10:44
Quote Posted by Tomi
Yeah, I'd probably learn to play the game if I spent a bit more time on it, and I'm fairly sure that there's an interesting game buried in there somewhere... But, since the theme and all the mystery were the only things in Cultist Simulator that really caught my attention within the first hour or so, I think I'll just move onto something else.
A lot of the gameplay is about learning how to play it and exploring the different interactions between cards. Use pause liberally (in part to read the various cards) and experiment with what happens when you stick a random card into a random slot. There are various ways to either erase the negative cards or turn them into something positive.
Cracking the code to avoid Despair and Hunger opens up the first stage of the game, learning how to grow your cult, which opens up the game even further. It really is a very complex game that doesn't do much to help you on your way, but to me that is part of the charm. It's also very thematic that you'd have to stumble your way to power drawn from eldritch entities with little to no direction.
I've only beaten it once and that was after several close attempts.
Renault on 31/1/2023 at 22:56
I've been playing Shadow of the Tomb Raider, and have seen some criticism of it here recently. I have to say though, it's been several years since I played the first two games in this recent trilogy, but this one seems the most like old school Tomb Raider. I feel like overall I've been doing a whole lot more exploring/climbing/puzzle solving than killing mercenaries with a machine gun. Between the main game challenge tombs (9) and the 7 more included via DLC, plus the 10 crypts to explore, I've been enjoying the game quite a bit.
Don't get me wrong though, some of the same criticisms from the first two games still applies. Constantly taking control away from the player. Really awful scripted sequences that are essentially de facto quick time events. Boring paint by numbers story, and overly long conversations and dialogue. But if you can get by that... The settings and environments are amazing and gorgeous, and there's a whole lot to do (some interesting, some not, but a lot of it being completely optional), so I feel like I can take the bad with the good and still have a great time playing Lara again.