Sulphur on 6/3/2024 at 05:55
LoP is a lot closer to Bloodborne in terms of world design (and, let's face it, UI - even the fonts are similar) than it is to Souls. The parry system is a bit Sekiro, but overall it hews close to 'cover band version of Bloodborne'.
It's still very well put-together and runs a damn sight better, but the only appeal I see for it is to get more Bloodborne if you rinsed it, or a slightly easier version of it minus the incredibly thick atmosphere From is able to conjure up in comparison.
henke on 6/3/2024 at 19:27
I've been playing The Brew Barons, which is a Crimson Skies/Porco Rosso inspired flying game/brewery management sim. I backed it on KS years ago, started playing as soon as I got that key last Thursday. 15 hours in right now. I've barely done any combat, mostly just been focused on exploring, gathering ingredients and brewing/selling booze. The flight physics are pretty good. For a 2 person development team, this is a remarkably polished product. Still, there's the occasional jank here and there. The biggest pleasant surprise to far has been the story missions. As you go you gather more members to your Brew Baron crew, and pair up different people as pilot+co-pilot, it unlocks their shared story mission, and these have been surprisingly elaborate and fun. The biggest unpleasant surprise has been learning that the devs used AI voices (in addition to human voiceactors), feels icky since it's not really clear whose voices the AI was trained on.
Tomi on 15/3/2024 at 15:39
I finished Lies of P yesterday. It's a decent game and I had fun playing it, but I probably won't feel like playing another souls-like for about three years now. I've never played Bloodborne so I don't know how the two games compare, but I prefer Lies of P over Dark Souls at least. The story was a bit of a let-down in the end, I think I got the most miserable of the three different endings. The combat feels pretty good and balanced, even though I don't particularly like the contrast between the hellishly difficult boss fights and easy-peasy normal enemies that's so common in these kind of games.
And now I'm back to playing Tunic. Spent like an hour or so trying to figure out what am I supposed to be doing, until I remembered that there are some vague instructions in the "manual" that I should follow. This was probably the first moment when I thought that I get what Tunic is all about, until I bumped into more things that confused the hell out of me (but in a good way). :D I think I'm going to like this game.
Aja on 15/3/2024 at 18:31
Bloodborne is brutally difficult, both the normal enemies and particularly the bosses. It has excellent combat and visual and sound design although it is rather tonally oppressive. My only real complaint with it, though, is that it looks absolutely awful on a modern TV, and the framerate is lurchy to say the least. Normally I acclimate to lower framerates pretty quickly, but there's something particularly bad about it (frame pacing, maybe?), and now that I've put it down, it's hard to go back. If ever a game was in need of a remake or at least a 60FPS patch.
Renault on 15/3/2024 at 22:25
Now is as probably a good of a time as ever to mention Ashen, my latest obsession. It's a Soulslike, but it also does it own thing really well. All the basic gameplay and combat mechanics are nearly identical to Dark Souls, but the world and lore and mood are much less bleak and almost upbeat, a refreshing change. The game is "open world" and uses a beautiful art style that really sticks out. I love it. But the world is also much more compact and simplified compared to something like Elden Ring, and will probably only take you around 20-30 hours to finish. There's a lot of emphasis on exploration and even some platforming, and yes combat is center stage too.
One cool twist is you'll always have a different NPC assisting you in combat, which IMO is necessary, because this game is difficult and I think the game is designed with that in mind (the real diehards can disable the AI in the menus if you want). It's kind of awesome how as you explore the world and meet more NPCs, they join up with you and park themselves back at your home base, a town called Vagrant's Rest. Most of them become vendors, selling potions/talismans/weapons/upgrades you can use for the rest of your journey, and of course they give you quests and fight with you as well. As the game progresses, they start to build structures and make what was originally just a basic outpost into a real town. It's all automated and it's not any kind of settlement building sim, it just happens and it just emphasizes how much you've progressed in the game.
Anyway, I highly recommend Ashen, especially if you're a Souls fan. Some may find the $40 price tag a bit steep, but it goes on sale all the time for 10 bucks (including right now in the Steam Spring sale).
Tomi on 19/3/2024 at 15:59
Quote Posted by Tomi
I probably won't feel like playing another souls-like for about three years now.
Quote Posted by Tomi
And now I'm back to playing
Tunic.
Little did I know that Tunic is pretty much like a Souls game with more colorful palette and an adorable fox protagonist. :D
The other day I bumped into the first proper boss enemy in the game, and spent quite a while trying to beat it... until I figured out that you can
level up your character by offering certain items at shrines. Of course, after that the boss fight was
much easier, and I felt like a bit of an idiot. I think that may have finally taught me that the manual in Tunic is
not just a cute little collectible. Still, most of the time I have no idea what I am supposed to be doing, but the game design in Tunic is so great that it always seems to guide the player into the right direction, without ever holding their hand. The game is also great at trolling the player, when a secret passage from the end of a dungeon leads right back to where you started. It's both frustrating and hilarious. :p
All I can say at this stage is that Tunic is quite a unique experience at least.
henke on 19/3/2024 at 19:36
Yeah Ashen was fun, aside from the final boss fight which I just gave up on.
I been playing...
The Brew Barons
Just finished it! A quite uneven, but overall lovely game about flying around a beautiful archipelago, making brews and making friends. It took me a long time before I delved into the aerial combat side of it, and once I did I was kinda offput by the inscrutable process of fighting the enemies. Most of them have some weird procedure you need to go through in order to actually harm them and I had to eventually just look up a guide to find out what I was even supposed to be doing. Once I did know what to do, however, it was pretty fun! The final boss was tough. Took me 4 attempts, but I finally got him. Yeah, overall, I enjoyed my time with the Barons. Good game!
Venineth
A real hardcore rolling ball platformer with occasionally very confusing levels. Feels like Gish in 3D. Whether that's a good or a bad thing is very much a YMMV kinda thing. Me? I love it. Have played 7 hours of it already. Good game to play while listening to a podcast. This game is like Exo One, except GOOD.
Jedi Survivor
I started this weeks ago, played the first few hours, but then Pacific Drive happened and I forgot all about it. Recently picked it up again, aaaaand... it's nice! No big surprises. It's just a kinda reliably fun AAA action-adventure romp.
Malf on 20/3/2024 at 06:42
I never got around to finishing Jedi Survivor.
My interest dropped off a cliff after defeating a certain big boss. I mean, I'm probably only a half hour or so from completing the game, but I'd had enough by that point. It's a competent enough game, and a good sequel to Fallen Order, but it's just so... bland.
It's does very little original, and is pleasantly generic.
What I did really like was the opportunity to slow combat down in the difficulty settings. Some of the optional fights are pretty unfair, with enemies with long invincibility frame windows and very quick, unblockable attacks that can kill you in one or two hits. Being able to slow those fights down made them possible (and also emphasised how badly designed some of those enemy attacks are).
Sulphur on 20/3/2024 at 10:00
I liked Exo One just fine, though it could have been a better game. Great vibes, honestly. henke liking Venineth means that it should be even better than Exo One! Or should it?
Let's algebra it. X1 = G(ood). Assuming good gameplay gives us about 2X the Goodness of Exo One, V1 =2G(ood). However, we must multiply this by the henke constant, which is relative to our respective likes. For example, I can't stand trucks or games about fiddly physics, and I love spectacle fighters (these are games where the characters wear spectacles, like Bayonetta and Half Life 2), while henke's kinda flip-floppy on those. So we'll set that to 0.45.
Therefore, multiplying by the henke constant and adjusting for my disposition, V1 = -h * 2G, which leads us to V1 = -0.9G, which means it's probably going to be something I'll hate, and the matter is settled. Thank you, maths!
I've been playing Horizon: Forbidden West, which is about 1.55G on this scale, so multiplying it with the henke constant, it turns out he'll probably like it slightly less than Exo One. Maths! Saving us all, one set of numbers at a time. Who even needs opinions!
Malf on 20/3/2024 at 10:18
As for myself, I'm still deep into Dwarf Fortress at the moment.
I've got a great, successful fort going, "Charmedsacks", with over 200 occupants, while still maintaining a decently playable framerate (although admittedly, I have turned on DFHack's "Fastdwarf" option, which makes dwarfs move and work at maximum speed all the time).
It's a fortress built around a volcano, with some necromancer towers nearby, meaning frequent undead army sieges, and a very active lycanthrope population (were-bisons, lizards, gila-monsters, badgers and even a tortoise!)
I've got three squads of ten all kitted out with masterwork steel equipment, and even some artifact and divine weapons, so invaders generally die quickly. One main squad which guards the entrance (I've got into the habit of making a bastion around the entrance to my fortress, and set the squad to train in the ground floor which is also the only above-ground entrance), a squad for the Captain of the Guard, which handles dwarven justice, and a newly formed squad of "irregulars", made up of elves, goblins and humans that have joined the fortress. They're also all bards. None of them have the surname "Sassoon".
The Captain of the Guard's squad is very busy, as no sooner is an artifact made, some tea-leaf seems intent on nicking it.
I have moved quite a few of the fortress' artifacts into a locked, glass vault. But even then, if I need to open it to move a new artifact into the vault, someone will take the opportunity to nip in and streal something.
I did originally have the tavern set up to welcome everyone, including off-map visitors, and also employed a tavern keeper, but that very nearly resulted in the death of the fort, as tavern keepers don't know when to stop serving booze, resulting in lots of fights, blood and vomit, all of which tend to spill out into the general population, so I sacked the tavern keeper and restricted the pub to citizens and long-term residents only.
Instead, I am now intent on building a dedicated temple (with masterwork gold altar!) for each and every religion. I think I'm about halfway through a list of 200.
I've successfully walled up the cavern layers, and in doing so have stopped any unwanted incursions down there. There's currently an acknowledged bug where you'll get wave after wave of invaders in the caverns instead of just one or two, which can be fun for training dwarves quickly, but is also quite wearing over time. Of course, this also means that forgotten beasts no longer "visit" my fortress through the caverns, which is where most, if not all forgotten beasts arrive. This means fewer opportunities for legendary battles, but as forgotten beasts are procedurally generated and often come with unpleasant side-effects, such as deadly contaminants that can spread through the fortress, I'm not really missing them.
Dwarf Fortress continues to amuse and astonish me after all these years, and is more akin to a creative pursuit such as learning an instrument.
I did also end up buying Helldivers 2, with the tipping point being that interview on RPS where one of the devs noted how they'd taken the system-driven gameplay of ARMA as a major inspiration.
I've played a few rounds on my own, and one with completely silent randos, but I think a lot of the fun comes from goofing off with friends. I don't think there's much appetite for the game among the regular co-op crew here, but it would be nice to play with someone I know at some point.
Of course, both DF and Helldivers 2 may be taking a bit of a back-seat come Friday and the release of Dragon's Dogma 2.
