Starker on 7/6/2020 at 11:55
I have found that guarding / blocking works great, actually. Just don't try to block everything and take breaks to restore your posture, if needed. It gives you some much needed time to get used to the enemy's attack patterns. There are some special attacks that can't be blocked (you see a red kanji flash as a warning) -- those need to be either deflected (thrusts) or dodged (grab attacks, usually telegraphed well in advance) or jumped (sweeps). Also, some attacks (like fire) deal damage that isn't completely nullified by guarding.
Deflecting / parrying is also very important, as mentioned. It's one of the two main ways to defeat enemies. Deflecting their attacks deals posture damage (you see a yellow bar fill up) and when you deplete their posture, you get a chance to perform a deathblow that either kills the enemy instantly or in the case of bosses and minibosses fills one deathblow counter and advances the fight to stage 2.
Some enemies, though, restore their posture way too quickly for this strategy to defeat them. Instead, you need to chip away on their vitality (the red bar) first. The lower their health is, the slower they recover their posture, so it either becomes possible to use the first strategy again or you can just deplete their vitality bar. In order to deal vitality damage, you need to find gaps in their defence where they can't block your attack -- when they need some time to recover after performing a powerful attack or they are sent reeling for a moment from you deflecting their attacks or they do an attack that exposes their back to you, try to get a slash or two in and don't get too greedy.
It all does take some time to get used to, especially coming in from Dark Souls. I think the thing that tripped me up the most is that there's no stamina meter -- you can attack indefinitely, but doing so leaves you open to counterattacks, so you need to pay close attention to when enemies stop blocking and start deflecting (louder sword clash sounds, bigger sparks) to know when you need to brace for their attacks.
Damn, all this talk makes me want to pick the game up again.
Harvester on 7/6/2020 at 15:28
I finished SOMA today, great game. I'm generally bad at stealth games and beforehand I didn't know if I should pick the mode where the monsters can't kill you. Decided not to, and thankfully the stealth sections weren't too hard. I died a few times but nothing too frustrating. The light puzzle elements were fun too.
I liked the companionship with Catherine throughout the game. I didn't really get a sense of the other characters where you hear the audio files and data buffers the way I did in the System Shock games, the characters were pretty interchangeable. And some of the events that happened weren't all that clear to me. But still, good game and I liked the themes of identity and what it means to be a person. Great ending too, I mean the downbeat ending and then the uplifting after-credits scene.
I then played A Short Hike, a fun palate cleanser. Cute and sweet and charming. I think I did most of the things you can do, although I didn't really fish much and didn't win the second race against that guy. Don't know how many races there are and what the reward is, if any. I actually liked that not everything has a reward, like picking up trash from that small island off-coast is its own reward.
Now I think I'll try the new System Shock demo, if my system can handle it.
EDIT: I also tried Super Hexagon (like A Short Hike also from the itch.io bundle talked about in the Bargain Deals thread), but those images are so fast it kind of fucks me up in the head. I could only play that in short stretches, like 15 minutes max.
Thirith on 7/6/2020 at 16:18
Since it was considerably cheaper, I got Ori and the Will of the Wisps now, as it'd been on my wishlist. It's lovely, like the first game, though I do find it veers towards the saccharine at times. I'm in two minds about some of the things it's borrowed from Hollow Knight; they're not bad game mechanisms, but it feels like too direct a lift from a competitor, where before Ori and Hollow Knight obviously came from a similar place but still each had their own identity. Nonetheless, it's a beautifully crafted game, lovely to look at and listen to.
Starker on 7/6/2020 at 16:26
Quote Posted by Harvester
EDIT: I also tried Super Hexagon (like A Short Hike also from the itch.io bundle talked about in the Bargain Deals thread), but those images are so fast it kind of fucks me up in the head. I could only play that in short stretches, like 15 minutes max.
Yeah, Cavanagh's games can be kind of be like that. VVVVVV and Don't Look Back, while both excellent games, are other examples that tend to try people's patience a bit.
Hmm, I wonder if I should try to download some of my favourite Flash games now that Flash is finally going away.
Renault on 7/6/2020 at 20:38
Took a quick spin through The Town Of Light - it's an awkward game with uncomfortable topics, but it definitely had a strong effect on me. It's actually more of a walking sim, driven by narrative, but I enjoyed the experience all the same. I suppose you could compare it something like Gone Home. It deals with a girl recounting her time in an asylum/mental hospital, and although there are some scary moments, it's not really a horror game per se. No supernatural events or AI, but the reality side of it, I guess, can at times make it even more frightening than something made up. Anyway, worth a look if you like these kinds of things, on sale right now for around 3 bucks. Took me about 4 hours to play through.
As an aside, after finishing the game, I have no idea what the title of the game refers to. I must have missed something.
Pyrian on 7/6/2020 at 20:45
Trying out Hollow Knight, I don't even remember where I got it but everybody praises to heck and back so why not. So far unimpressed, I have no idea why I'm here doing this and I have to grind money to unlock basic mapping capabilities.
Jason Moyer on 8/6/2020 at 04:13
Beat Thief II, which I think is the first time I actually completed Soulforge. Best expansion pack ever.
Sulphur on 8/6/2020 at 04:22
Quote Posted by Thirith
Since it was considerably cheaper, I got
Ori and the Will of the Wisps now, as it'd been on my wishlist. It's lovely, like the first game, though I do find it veers towards the saccharine at times. I'm in two minds about some of the things it's borrowed from
Hollow Knight; they're not bad game mechanisms, but it feels like too direct a lift from a competitor, where before
Ori and
Hollow Knight obviously came from a similar place but still each had their own identity. Nonetheless, it's a beautifully crafted game, lovely to look at and listen to.
I'd have more of a problem with those mechanics being borrowed if they felt like they didn't belong in the kind of experience Ori is, but I think they're differentiated enough in gameplay yet seamlessly executed - as I noted earlier, Ori's far more manoeuvrable this time, which makes a lot of things flow better. It's a net positive, given the fixed combat of Ori and the Blind Forest wasn't particularly compelling. (I guess having the guy who designed AM2R on the team helped.)
And hey, cartographers notwithstanding, neither Ori nor Hollow Knight is particularly original when it comes to mechanics, so each to its own.
Thirith on 8/6/2020 at 05:29
That's definitely true. So far, though, I do think that Ori's spirit shards are a bit half-assed, compared to the mostly more original charms and their interactions in Hollow Knight. Though that may just be because I'm still pretty early. On a different note, I hope they're still optimising the game, because it is surprisingly stuttery - but boy, is it a looker!
Sulphur on 8/6/2020 at 05:42
It had a tendency to do that audio stutter when streaming in data at launch, but as of the last patch I thought that'd been smoothed out. More work to be done, I guess!