The Gaming Den

Requested link for Endless Space voting:

http://endless-space.amplitude-studios.com/Games2gether

So I bought Record of Agarest War with my gift voucher, and... I can totally see where Cross-Edge got all of its mechanics from. Like, all of them: the "we have a grid but you can almost ignore it" thing, the AP mechanics, the super moves, the "HP is all restored after battle unless you get killed in which case you need a nurse", the Break mechanic, the item boosting-and-converting, the alchemy/crafting (recipes come from books, yes), the combo attacks, the levelling system and discretionary stat points... no really, the mechanics are almost identical.

I don't mind this in the slightest. In fact, it made it really easy to get into. Now the game also has dating sim elements, where you try to keep various girls happy, apparently because the game will go over a few generations and the abilities of your progeny depend on the girl you fuck, or something.

So it's good fun. And I picked Disgaea 4 up again. Still going good, and Artina (now actually called Artina and not "Er no I'm totally Vulcanus, I've never met you before honest!") actually has a damaging move now. Finally. Not that it matters, what with Desco being the powerhouse she is.

Shatner wrote:
Beyond that, I'm curious what you do/don't like about the game, because I'm deeply conflicted on it. It has enough neat innovation striped through it that it's interesting and I really want to get into a good space 4X game. However, I ultimately find the game to get kinda stale; turning into a big colonization race, followed by a brief spike in warfare, and then it is clear who will eventually win the game, although it might take a couple more hours of gameplay to actually get there. Of course, maybe I haven't realized the "right" approach to playing the game that'll make it engaging from start to finish, and that the fault lies more on my end than on Endless Space's.

No, that's about right.

It's a fun game, but they made the mistake of listening to forum regulars who tend to be builders. This means that the warfare aspect of the game is pretty underdeveloped and taking systems takes way too long for most of the important parts of the game.

During the endgame when it starts to get reasonable to take systems, the game is essentially over with the winner being the guy who colonized early and well.

Personally, I get really bored with most of the building aspects and so the game has been losing my interest, but the fact that it seems to be a work in progress and is constantly being rebuilt means that I am hopeful that it will eventually become a great game instead of being just a pretty good game.

For example, stuff like the diplomacy system or the exploration rewards is pretty recent and a major change, so it means that the final version of Endless Space could be an entirely different animal when they are done tweaking it.

Before I start, I just want to say: Prak, if you recall, in the Pokyman's thread, I said that your Thri Kreen paws could not have "my" (re:DarthRabbitts) 3DS. Well, I've relented. Just because you have a chitinous exoskeleton and mandibular mouthage appendages, does not mean I should not respect you as a insectoid with hominid qualities. Thus, I lay down my claim to said 3DS, and if DarthRabbitt decides to give it away, I give my blessing to him to give away something that's his and really up to him to what he does with it, thus making it not really my place to say whether or not he should give it away to lesser, squishier lifeforms. Now I'm rambling. See what you made me do?

Anyway, the reason I bring this painful subject up is thus: I have found out today that the female trainer in PokemonX/Y is totally hot, and that alone is enough for me to buy the game, despite Gen V's general terribleness. Secondly, Dragonquest VII is almost definitely going to get an English localization, and that blows my balls really hard.

My point: These games will be for the 3DS, so I'm going to really need one*.


*Which is why I'm going to buy a 3DSXL, because everything I own must be huge. It's the American way.

And with finding out about the DQVII localization I'll probably keep the 3DS for the Pokemon and Dragon Quest titles/remakes.

Sorry Prak.

EDIT: Also, the female player character from X/Y looks like the one from Fire Red/Leaf Green with a less awesome hat.

That being said, the female player character from Fire Red/Leaf Green had one of the better character designs so that's not a bad character design (all of the male player character trainers look almost identical to me, and IMHO have rather uninspired designs for the most part)

No comment on you saying she's hot.

Don't talk smack about my future fantasy wife!

So, I've been doing The Old Republic F2P on and off for a while. My opinion is decidedly mixed.

Good:

1. The classing system is pretty nice. As I mentioned in another thread, there's basically four classes (Sith Warrior/Jedi Knight, Sith Inquisitor/Jedi Consular, Bounty Hunter/Trooper, Imperial Agent/Smuggler, apparently only cosmetic differences between equivalent classes) that then specialize at level ten into one of two paths. They've got different recharge mechanics that really effect how they play, so my Jedi Knight leaps screaming into combat with two lightsabers and alternates between basic attacks, special extra rage generation attacks, and rage-consumption attacks as my charge bar fluctuates, while my Sith Inquisitor stands behind a giant reptile-man and alternates between different kinds of electrocuting people as cooldowns allow until I run out of mana.

2. The game is fully voice-acted, and the voicework on some bits is great. In particular, the female inquisitor has a great smugly self-assured tone that's perfect for all the various incidents where someone starts out a conversation angrily or says you can't do something, and one of the conversation options is basically, "I am a Sith Lord and you will treat me with appropriate respect. Now, what did you have to say?"

3. A bunch of the quests are pretty fun story-wise. The Sith Inquisitor quest-giver type, Lord Zash, is pretty awesome. Also, one of the big dungeons for the Sith has a cool dark-side/light-side split, where you can opt to execute someone for disobedience or not. Effects thereof:

On the lightside one, everything goes smoothly. He shoots down incoming sabatoge droid pods and leaves you to fight off other boarders, you board the enemy ship, capture or kill the guy you're after, go back to your ship, everything is good.

On the darkside run, his subordinate takes over, and she doesn't know about sabatoge droids. You have to fight those off instead of normal boarders. Everyone on the bridge is clearly terrified of you, and after you're on board the other ship some of them decide to try to flee to avoid you killing them for underperforming. Others realize they'd get killed for that, and they get in a firefight and kill each other off. You come back and the bridge is covered in corpses.

4. They manage to convincingly explain how a Sith-controlled empire holds together. Firstly, the Emperor himself is a huge badass. At least, everyone thinks he's a huge badass. I dunno, apparently no one ever meets him. But he supposedly kicks enough ass no one thinks they can take him, not even his direct subordinates. Secondly, the Sith aren't technically allowed to kill each other for advancement. They have to make sure they aren't caught, which tamps down on turnover somewhat.

Bad:

1. Because the game is fully voice-acted, the dialogue isn't terribly flexible. Three options per conversation max, and there's the whole thing where no one can ever mention your character name. Also, it's vaguely jarring how female Sith are called Lord, presumably because roughly every conversation as a Sith has someone call your character Lord at least once.

2. Morality system screwiness. Personally, I like absolute morality systems in my Star Wars games, but some of the choice-morality mapping strikes me as dubious. Most strikingly, there's a quest where a Senator is allegedly secretly negotiating with the Sith, and obtaining the documents that would prove or disprove that is dark side, because it's illegal. I mean, I guess it's illegal, I don't actually know. It's apparently a diplomatic package being sent to a Republic Senator, so whether a Jedi is allowed to open it gets into the whole legally nebulous status of Jedi and also laws regarding diplomatic packages to individual legislators. There's this whole spiel about how the republic is founded on representing the views of individuals even if others disagree with them, but the alleged negotiations are secret, so the guy probably wasn't elected on the platform of conducting them.

3. That quest and some others tie into the whole legal status of Jedi thing. What the hell is their legal status anyway? I guess at this point in history they're legally just guys? Except at least one of them gets command of a naval squadron but apparently isn't a member of the military, so maybe not? This is kind of an important question on some quests, where a given course of action would be illegal if they're just guys but would be legal if they're treated as police.

4. The story quests make it pretty clear evil is triumphing because good is dumb. It's... pretty bad. First, Coruscant has pretty much gone to hell. This is partially because the Empire attacked Coruscant and tore it up, but it's also because the Republic has completely failed to restore order. So large districts are basically controlled by crime syndicates. By the time republic characters get to Coruscant, it's way past time to declare martial law. The crime syndicates actually have the police outgunned, because they're getting Sith support. Secondly, the Republic seems to have this weird mental block where they don't grasp that suspiciously well-armed groups may very likely be receiving support from the one other major government in the galaxy. This is especially funny because Imperial planetary arrivals tend to include mentioning that the locals are clearly receiving republic support. And then there's the Jedi Knight quests on Coruscant.

So, you arrive on-planet to talk to some guys, and learn that Black Sun has stolen a superweapon called the Planet Prison, which is a device that makes the upper atmosphere of a planet ionized to shut down the electronics of any ships that pass through it. For some reason, the guy in charge of security for the project was not fired after it was stolen by criminals on a planet with trillions of people on it. Actually, no one even seems to realize that cutting off all space travel to and from a city-world would cause starvation. Also it turns out that the guy who designed it was an undercover Sith Lord.

What makes the giant list of fuckups even worse is that the Empire seems to be better at governing and less corrupt, even though it's literally run by the Sith. In particular, the capital world of Dromond Kaas was hacked out of dark-side tainted forest after the invasion of the republic began. Instead of crime lords ruling over major cities, they've got angry jungle beasts, a slave revolt off at a construction site, a rogue Sith Lord in his isolated and fortified manor, and a giant tomb full of malevolent ghosts. Kaas city itself is fine.

5. Everything is too fucking big. This is a serious offense in any game where you are obligated to do a lot of walking. It seems to take more time to get from the senate taxi to questgivers inside the senate in this than it takes to get from the gate to anywhere in a city in Skyrim. The Senate is the worst offender I've met so far, at least of the quest hubs as opposed to dungeons. But everywhere is too large. And it's too large for no reason, because the space is mostly empty or just has random scenery NPCs.

6. Control scheme is pretty awkward. The biggest thing is that it can be hard to tell if you're in melee range, and triggering a melee ability while targeting someone out of range just tells you it's out of range instead of automatically moving you into melee.

7. Companions are all kinds of screwy. Firstly, people aren't on symmetrical schedules for getting class companions after the first. So my level 13 jedi knight has gotten his second companion but my level 16 inquisitor has not. Secondly, there's an influence meter thing, and the first Sith Inquisitor companion is irritating to keep happy. I mean, he's pretty simple; he generally wants you to act like a completely stereotypical Sith Lord. So he gets offended if you aren't actively rude to people. Since he's currently my only companion, I keep seeing his mild disapproval because I generally go for polite options unless the character talking to me pisses me off.

8. Their Free To Play model. Buckle in, rant time.

So, one thing they do is permitting only two characters for free, except for grandfathered characters. All right, fair enough, I can accept that. Kind of annoying because I'd like one character in each class pairing, but understandable. I'm generally fine with paygating content.

No, what pisses me off is the bit where they're clearly fucking with F2P players. Firstly, F2P players get Sprint at level 15 instead of level 1. Given the outlandishly huge areas, that's really irritating. Also, there's a crew skills thing that basically totals out to a crafting/raw materials gathering system. F2P players only get one at a time, so you can gather raw materials or craft them, but not both. XP gain is also slowed, although they fucked up the balance enough that the slowdown is the only thing keeping me close to the level I should be because I like sidequests. Also, a lot of interface elements are locked behind paywalls, specifically having more than two quickbars. Oh, and some quest rewards are only for subscribers. Also, inventory expansion and shipboard inventory are also only for people who pay money. Now, if you start a debate about this in chat, pretty much everyone will be ranting about how F2P players are all freeloading assholes who don't want to pay for anything and the stuff I mentioned won't be brought up. This is because F2P players may only send chat messages once every minute except in group chat. This is allegedly an anti-spam measure, but I'm pretty sure the real reason is to produce the illusion that the subscribers are decisively winning the argument. Also to lock easily finding groups behind a paywall.

The net effect of all this is that I'm almost certainly not going to subscribe or do the fixed purchases thing simply because fuck EA.

Just finished up the new Borderlands 2 DLC.

Verdict:

My god, the areas in here are gorgeous. Your hub is a giant grotto sheltered by a mountain over top of it. There's waterfalls and smaller, lesser grottos inside it. It's awesome. Then there's one place, high in the mountains, where it's always raining. Looks like some of those Chinese karst topography mountains--super tall and slender, narrow. And the mist and the atmospherics...Yeah.

Now, the meat. The new critters are interesting. I can endorse their claims of it being harder. The local tribes come in freakin' swarms and have a mix of abilities. The critters are also pretty badass in their own right. The final two story bosses are interesting fights, as well.

If I have a complaint, it's that the areas are almost -too- big, without enough to fill them. Don't get me wrong, there's stuff going on. But this is some serious real estate.

Also, the final story mission gives you a new character head. Since I play as the Gunzerker, it gave me a spiked pith helmet, a giant 1800's-style handlebar mustache, and it's named Mustache of Legend.

That is fucking cool. The Commando's head is likewise awesome.

So to buy or not to buy? Well, tough call. If you've got the ten bucks to blow, yeah, go for it. It seems a bit more singleplayer-friendly than Torgue. But as said before, it seems to go quickly.

Yeah, I was blown away by how good the environments looked. Something about the giant spires of craggy stone really appeals to me. Probably half the reason I played RAGE at all is that it had that sort of geology all over the place.

I thought Nakayama was fairly funny, in a kind of Venture Bros way.

It is disappointing how very short it is, though. I really hope we get something as gargantuanly substantial as Knoxx eventually.

If I have one complaint, it's because of all the enemies that're suddenly bulletproof and rebound the bullets back at you.

I play the Gunzerker. I have the Shredinator, an assault rifle with about a hundred-round clip and the little gatling barrels.

On true vault hunter, I was taking myself out sometimes. Especially against whatsisname, Whip-whatever, and Jackenstein.

Yeah, Jackenstein was annoying as hell. I ended up killing him while downed and second-winded off him because at least when I'm in Fight For My Life my own bullets don't hurt me! I thought most of the new enemies were actually quite interesting, although the sheer indestructibility of the witch doctors and badass savages was kind of annoying.

At some point I need to look where the orange Anshin and Pangolin shields drop, because I've been using the Bee on my Maya since pre-nerf (it's still really good with SMGs) but at this point the survivability is just too low.

I burned about three golden keys getting a level 50 Absorb shield. THen a buddy of mine gave me a orange shield called the Impaler. Does spike damage, even when shot (sends out little homing spikes).

With other knicknacks I've gotten...well, I don't have any excuse for sucking. Because my equipment is rockin'.

Edit: Oh, forgot I knew about this: List of orange items and what drops them.. Borderlands 2 is down further, of course.

All right, so I think there are five stages in Sonic Generations that I can play without completely raging: Green Hill Zone, Chemical Plant Zone, Sky Sanctuary, Speed Highway, and Rooftop Run. Unfortunately the only person whose times I can compare mine to is way better at this than me and also plays it a lot more, so it gets really frustrating when, for example, I practice the fuck out of the impossible shortcut at the beginning of Chemical Plant Zone and then he still beats my best time by fifteen seconds. But those five levels I can just about enjoy the scenery while getting a bad time.

Crisis City I actually really like the look of and a fair amount of the gameplay, but it feels glitchy as fuck. City Escape has a decentish bit bookended by two really boring parts (snowboarding, run away from the truck). And then the Sonic Heroes level is just boring and annoying and Planet Wisp is fourteen hours long and not interesting.

I've just started Baldur's Gate 2 again after having last played it about 10 years ago and I have to say this game fucken rocks. Probably the best PnP>CRPG implementation ever. Can't wait for the Enhanced Edition.

Has anyone played the EE of the original Baldur's?
I'd like to know if it's worth getting, especially on ipad so I can game on the train with something with a decent plot and length.
Also, that doesn't require micropayments to be any good.

Starting to get the hang of Bayonetta, I guess. You're supposed to become super fluent with the timing of all the attacks so you can have long uninterrupted strings where you get a ton of combos chained nicely and never get hit, yeah? And combos are linked with gunfire and stuff? I'm only two chapters in, not counting the prologue and clock tower tutorial.

That's more or less the ideal.

In practice, well, I settled for "surviving".

Grace and Glory.

My. God. Grace and Glory.

Been playing some Fire Emblem 12. I maayyyy have been overusing the custom-generated main character. What with her being near the level cap about halfway through the game and all. To be fair, I did use a promotion item at about level 12 when she capped two stats. So she's only really about 10 levels ahead of the second-highest level non-prepromote. Also, she keeps getting progressively sillier hat/hair options. I decided to keep the priest hat but the sunglasses mask was a bit too much.

I've got this running problem with Fire Emblem games where I pretty much accidentally let people fall off the viable roster. I just don't really use them for 2-3 maps and suddenly they're not really up to being a mainline combatant and I'm force-raising other people.

Oh, they've screwed with the avoid formula so stats boost it only half as much. This was a problem for a female myrmidon My Unit. Okay, actually it still is with the more accurate enemies. That's what Defense and HP are for.

Started playing Overlord 2.

I like the thematics. Especially the Evil Presence spell. Using magic to overwhelm people, to the point that prolonged exposure can kill them, and short-term exposure dominates them? That's a pretty iconic Evil Overlord action.

Oh, and the minions can ride wolves. That's awesome.

So it turns out Diablo III's post game is less constantly bum rushing an end boss and hoping he explodes into awesome things and more like farmville. As a result, I don't imagine I will stick around much longer and am planning to move onto the Mass effect series. Any advice for owning those games. My initial peek makes it seem like the soldier class is consistently good, but I am willing to be corrected.

Soldier is okay, it's a very vanilla choice that's competent at everything and doesn't require you to pay attention to funky powers. My personal favorite class is the Vanguard, at least the ME2/3 version where you teleport around crashing into enemies and stunlocking them.

In ME1, the biotic power Lift is extremely powerful as crowd control. It doesn't exist anymore in 2 and 3, but Pull and Singularity are still pretty good.

In ME1, make sure you have someone in your party with Electronics and Decryption, since your ability to unlock stuff is powered by those skills. I think they also give your vehicle more shields? Whatever, they're just important skills that aren't obvious.

Soldier in ME1 is pretty dull, IIRC. Your thing is that you can actually use all four types of guns properly, but Sniper Rifles kind of suck and assault rifles are not spectacular. Vanguards can use shotguns and pistols and also throw enemies into the sun.

That being said, cooldowns in mass effect one are kind of stupidly long. So I would advise against a pure tech/biotic as well.

In mass effect 2, I would advise against a vanguard. They are incredibly, outlandishly fun, but have several problems:

1. They use pistols and shotguns, and unlike the first game pistols aren't terribly good at long range.
2. Their signature charge ability is awesome but cannot target anything with shields or armor. On the lower difficulties a typical fight with mercs will have several people with these. On the higher difficulties, almost everything will. Including Husks.
3. Charge is kind of screwy with what it can or can't target, and having it crap out on you can easily be fatal, because it's a cover-based shooter and you rushed screaming out of cover then found yourself standing in the open like a moron.

However, soldiers are much improved. They pretty much redid the combat system. I'm unhappy about that in the abstract, because I conceptually like ME1's system and would have preferred an upgraded version of that to a completely different system, but ME2 does have better gunplay if you're in to cover-based shooters.

In the third, the Vanguard charge now works on all targets unless something goes screwy, but you need to dip into the config file and change the field of view or you will rapidly become completely disoriented.

Soldiers are much better than OK in ME1 as long as you aren't a dingus and realize that yes, you do have activated abilities and you get to activate them more than other people. You just put a couple points into weapons to have high grade Marksman or an Overkill/Assassinate combo and then you plow everything into Assault Training, Fitness and Soldier/Shock Trooper and maybe even take a cool down reducing armor inlay if you really resent the 4 seconds per minute that you are actually vulnerable. Then you activate all the cooldowns and all the bad people fall down. If more bad people show up you just activate all the cooldowns again because you have Adrenaline Rush and are therefore the winner of everything forever. Vanguards are on the same level but that's because Soldiers and Vanguards are both stupid good.

You can unlock Adrenaline Rush as one of the bonus powers to use on a subsequent playthrough, right? It depends on how many times you intend on replaying ME1 but Adrenaline Rush is yeah, really really good.

Spoilered for length; stuff about Mass Effect

Biotics are where it's at in ME1. Lift, Throw, Warp, and Singularity are all very awesome. Throw can kill something through its shields, because it does pure physical damage.

Sadly, Engineers don't get enough love from the player base. They can be surprisingly badass. And AI hacking is great in ME1, given how many geth you fight (protip: hack the rocket troopers. They don't hide in cover normally, and they'll do a lot of damage before they're brought down).

For the record, the Tech skills in 1 pretty much all combo into each other. Each one increases a different facet of the mines the tech skills lay down. Except for Electronics, which increases your shields.

Side note, because of that, and her racial skill, Tali is a surprisingly good tank. And shotguns, too. Work Electronics and Quarian Machinist and give her a good shotgun, and she'll screw some folks up.

But it -is- possible to work your cooldowns to under 10 seconds or so. You have to take everything you can, but it is a thing that you can do. Soldier is worth playing around with, just to unlock the other weapons for use with any class.

I prefer the shotguns, because once you get the Spectre-grade shotguns, you'll one-shot most stuff. But sniper rifles are satisfying to use, too, if you can get used to the aim wobble.

In ME2, they tried to stop Biotics from being God, and went too far. If enemies have shields or armor, generally your biotics can't do shit to them. But funny enough, Engineer and Infiltrator became boss.

In ME3, they softened up what defenses protect against biotic powers--now shielded enemies can be screwed with with certain powers, etc. But tech powers became even more boss; seriously, Overload is one of the deadliest powers in the game, just because of how quickly it can pull some shields off. Even the bruiser-level enemies, like Atlases and Banshees, can have their shields/barriers taken away with a couple of properly-specced Overloads.

ME3 also lets any class use any weapon. The problem is, carrying a lot of weapon weight slows down the recharge on your powers. On the plus side, carrying not much weapon weight speeds up the recharge.

Oh yeah. Weapon mods. ME1 weapons have mods. You can boost accuracy, damage, recoil, add effects to the ammo (chemical rounds/polonium rounds are boss). So you can come up with some crazy stuff. I played a soldier and had a sniper rifle specced out two damage-boosting items and explosive rounds. So I'd turn on Assassinate (the super-shot sniper power) and then shoot something with pretty much a cannon blast.

ME2 gives it a pass--instead you can find bonuses and stuff for the weapons, increased damage and ammo.

ME3, though, brings back the mods. And while they aren't as diverse as ME1, there's still a lot you can do. Put scopes on pistols, make a shotgun shoot through thin objects, that sort of thing.

/ramble