Lurker > paperwarior

Isles of Sea and Sky Demo (Steam)
A rare exploration Sokoban. The last kinda similar thing I recall is Toki Tori 2. It's got sort of a Zelda setup where you collect items and tools to be able to open gates and solve previously-impossible puzzles. It's a bit cryptic, usually just enough; not Tunic by any means. I look forward to the full game.

Final Fantasy XVI (PS5)
Finally. My evaluation is that it's quite a good game with a few flaws that are generally forgivable. It's not at the top of the character action genre and barely even nods to the number-crunching aspect of RPGs, but it tells an interesting fantasy story with likable characters, entertaining battles and straight-up ridiculous setpieces.

God, Dragon Warrior 2 (NES) is crazy grindy. It's terrible even with fast-forward.

Theatrhythm Final Fantasy Final Bar Line (Quest Mode)
I didn't expect to, but I cleared all the quests for the main game. A good variety of challenges there, from setting loadouts to overcome durable bosses, to playing the rhythm game itself to certain standards of accuracy.

Transiruby (PC)
Yeah, it's good. Kind of an easy Metroidvania but reminds me of the supremely chill Islets from a while back. Still collecting, not sure if I'll care to do speedruns/no death.

Wo Long: Battle of Zhongyuan (DLC) (PS5)
For the most part, a bit more of Wo Long, not too extensive or too brief. The patch brings some rather nice QoL features like tracked collectibles, and the new fist weapons are fun. I only got annoyed on the final optional stage, but ultimately it was about buckling down, trying different spell loadouts, and practicing.

Transiruby (Demo) (PC)
Seems cool. I went ahead and bought the full game.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (Switch)
I had wrapped up completion to an extent that I was satisfied and finally got around to going and fighting the final boss. To keep it short, this is a way better game than BotW, which I already liked, and possibly the best this year so far.

Lies of P (demo) (PS5)
Here's the Bloodborne clone with terrific aesthetics and uncertain gameplay footage, by nobody in particular. It's also a grimdark reimagining of Pinocchio, making it about the 10th adaptation of the classic novel in the last several years. Well, turns out the gameplay is good too. It's not overwhelmingly original or flashy, but a solid Soulslike combat design is not something just any developer can throw together, and this one is solid. The warping of the original story is fun as well: Pinocchio and the suitably-creepy monsters are both a type of AI-controlled robots built to follow Asimov-like laws one of which is not lying to humans, although there is clearly more going on than a large-scale accidental malfunction.

Street Fighter 6 - World Tour Mode (PS5)
I did this a few days back, but the ending point is somewhat uncertain. The mode is conceptually quite fun, making your avatar, meeting the characters, and customizing your own fighter with a mixture of their moves. It's cool getting to challenge nearly any NPC to a fight, and using special moves to traverse the environment is also janky fun. The downsides are mostly RPG quirks like weird, huge spikes in enemy stats, grindy character progression, and high numbers of random encounters.

Underleveled posted...

Wut

I assume it's the GBC emulation on Switch. That is one of the games available IIRC.

Speaking of only having finished main routes
Rance IX: The Helmanian Revolution (PC)
Gahahahaha. Rance returns in this direct sequel to Rance Quest, helping an exiled former prince overthrow the corrupt and crumbling government of his homeland for typically selfish reasons. The VN elements are greatly streamlined here from the previous few, only offering a small selection of cutscenes and battles at a time. The dungeons are gone as well, leaving only large-scale SRPG combat. This is very reminiscent of Fire Emblem, pitting your named characters against many enemies on a 2D grid battlefield. There are even support conversations between particular units from time to time. In addition to the one-time story battles, there are Free Battles, accessible at any time after they're unlocked, useful for training or offering a unique challenge such as an optional boss.

Outside of battle, there's a solid selection of customization elements to work with. Characters can equip power-boosting accessories, upgrade individual core stats with skill points, improve their weapons, and temporarily improve armor. Upgrading all available stats by 2, 4, 6, and 8 grants a passive improvement specific to the character each time, including lowered special move cost, and increased number of special move uses, and increasing the rate of random effects such as counters. Every unit also has a stat-based chance to not die any time they would have, which relieves some of the FE stress.

Another source of customization is the Hoverfort, a mechanized vehicle that plays a large role in the story. This is represented by a rectangular grid that can be loaded up with weapons and devices, like the inventory in Resident Evil. Upgrading the devices either powers them up or makes them smaller, allowing more stuff to be placed. In certain battles, one of the devices can be consumed to activate their effect, from a large beam attack to a 1x1 wall to moving a friendly or enemy unit elsewhere on the field. In some battles, enemies also attempt to get past your forces to invade the Hoverfort, which can trigger a defense battle where your unused party members defend the core.

There is also Rance Mode, which unsurprisingly involves Rance "interacting" with several of the female party members in H scenes (Not, mind you, the only H scenes in the game). In addition to being storylines of their own, these grant the characters significant numbers of skill points, but to activate each one takes a certain number points acquired from the main or free battles. There are a limited number of these, so you probably can't romance everyone on the first run.

The dark reflection of Rance Mode is bad ends. These can happen when you lose certain party members to certain battles, which seems difficult to do by accident. Then you get a choice to see the bad end or have them turn up perfectly safe. The bad ends are truly unpleasant. One strong point of the series is I like these characters. To see them meet with these terrible fates is just... bleh. They also result in an instant game over. If you're determined to watch all the scenes, good luck with that.

That aside, the story builds to an exciting and satisfying conclusion. One could say it's not truly Rance's story, but the story of others involved. He's not the most complicated character after all, and he doesn't change all that much. At least he seems to achieve his real goal here in order to prepare himself for the next and apparently final game in the series. On the way there, of course, there's no end to the absurdity from his interactions with returning and new characters. My favorite might be Miracle Tor, a self-styled Dark Witch who's every bit as arrogant and deluded as Rance, but in a rather different way. Also worth noting is Pigu, a strange girl who can divide herself into 8 copies during combat. They have rather low HP at that point but generating a small army of evade tanks has its uses.

I could just go on about this game. Love this series. I know it's not for everyone, but I recommend it to anyone else.

I wouldn't recommend quitting Wario Land II after finishing the main route, but it is still beating the game. You see the credits roll, and it's about as long as any other route in the game if you went in order from the beginning.

UshiromiyaEva posted...

150GB on PS5.

Ay caramba
Well, it's not surprising. I'm glad the PS5 comes with at least somewhat more storage than the PS4.

Glad it worked out. I was about to eat dinner so I was focused on that.

I've got Let's Go Eevee. I don't mind doing it as long as we can find a time to.

Teslagrad 2 (Switch)
If you played the first one, this fits into much the same mold, a hybrid of Metroidvania and Limbo-esque puzzle platformer. A quick rundown- There are some really fun movement abilities, boss fights can be rather fiddly, and for a game shadow-dropped in a Nintendo Direct, it runs disastrously poorly on Switch. Framerate problems are ubiquitous in modern games, but they're always particularly unfortunate in games where you can speed through the game world, making the problem worse by requiring faster loading.

I still can't believe data caps on home internet exist anywhere. It's outrageous.

I found it reasonably good, not barely acceptable. Lack of fast travel is the big problem, and lack of QA is highly visible. It's a good base for a sequel to improve on.

Something's happening here today
A show of strength with your boy's brigade
And I'm so happy and you're so kind
You want more money, of course I don't mind

I shave. My skin is sensitive and hurts if it isn't softened with water a bit first. I brush my teeth first and last thing each day, and usually bathe sometime during the day, not the evening.
You don't want to pee in the bath. If I need to, I step out and use the toilet.

You could do that in the betas but probably not carry it over.

It would actually be a disappointing demo without vs/training.

Limited-supply items are kind of dumb because they encourage hoarding even when it isn't even useful. But then you can usually get by just fine without them. I think the best use case is actually spamming elixirs for healing on the final or optional boss, because they provide the most benefit there and you won't need them afterward.

I don't have Gamepass but it was well worth it to pay full price for the game on Steam.

shane15 posted...

So the part of the game i care about was locked behind a lottery and the bit meant for people who cried about lack of single player in 5 is open to everyone.

The adventure mode demo is really nothing special. You can get a better feel of it from previous trailer footage. Anyway, there may be an open beta, and there's also another option that's apparently popular.

Kenri posted...

These are two very different qualities in a name. I agree with Sarah and Jane for boring, but unimposing is more like e.g. Sunshine, Princess, basically anything that works better as a pet name than a birth name or is embarrassing/childish.

I'd expect those characters to have something to prove.

Oh, the adventure mode part is very short. I could've fought more NPCs but they didn't let me take off the simplified controls.

I was interested to try the demo, nonetheless. Gives a look at adventure mode, basic tutorial, and versus with just Luke and Ryu. I hope there's an open beta so I can play it on PS5 because it was just terrible trying to run the last beta on my PC.

Mr_Lasastryke posted...

this board will never disappear

A certain independent spinoff forum just popped out of existence, but a replacement was created, and it drew in even some people who had previously left. Hopefully we can say the same if it ever happens to us.

I beat FF1 on original hardware too. It's really an experience.

The last Shovel Knight expansion had a Triple-Triad-like game driving the plot.

I noted Teslagrad 2 shadowdropped.

SHINE_GET_64 posted...

NO SILKSONG

I won $10

Who the hell did you bet against?

Lone Fungus (PC)
I started out enjoying this a lot. Then as I unlocked more abilities it got worse. There are just too many buttons involved in technical precision platforming here, including at least two face buttons and every shoulder button in default settings, and hitting the wrong one even once or missing the timing can throw you right back to the beginning of a long, demanding section. There are similar problems with clarity and navigation, but no worse than other games in this genre I suppose.

Yeah, you had to individually move them out of boss AOEs. It was kind of the minimum AI so that they weren't just sitting there while you're not controlling them.

I was gonna ask "Is that Xenoblade 4?"

I suppose. These are always so bland though. Just max everything and find everything.

No "suplex the train". Typical. Just typical.

junk_funk posted...

This is not even the best Dr. Seuss rap I've heard.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzAg0pGtQg0

That's more like it.

Darude - Sandstorm

I do get a 7R feeling. There were even bosses getting put in stagger mode. The action looks more flexible, though. 7R some big focuses are tagging between characters and telling the others to use moves. Here the party members are purely AI and you're controlling one character with various powers.

I'm not worried about any sort of venomous snake ending up in my house.

Malenia posted...

is there any reason we allow the French to continue

They've been known to keep the British in check.

I blame some part of this on the faulty PS1 translation.

No, I agree it can get intense, but it's just... simple. You're basically only moving your character and making decisions. Almost every game I want to play is more complex and demanding than it. While the 30 minute run length takes some commitment, it's pretty easy to pick up and play for a little while and accomplish something.

He doesn't seem like a killer. Can you imagine him walking up to someone and shouting "Pleeease dieeee"?

You could easily make it work on an NES controller.

masterplum posted...

4 kind of sucked due to how repetitive it was

but the dark chips are not the reason. Just use them and accept the permanent life loss you cowards

Are they attacks? I don't understand why you would ever take permanent HP loss to use an attack.

Alright, I may have just heard it as a crackpot theory before. There are themes in her story and the game's story in general about self-fulfilling prophecy but the AI thing is a major stretch.

colliding posted...

why even have numerical damage indicators in a game like this?

Series tradition, and also it's extremely common in ARPGs whether or not the info is all that useful from moment to moment.

It also asks very little of you. I sometimes feel like "I don't have the energy for this game" or possibly any game, but Vampire Survivors was never too much. It's kind of like an idle game without the waiting. You put in some decisions and they play out between level ups.