Hey [%target] Whatcha Playin'?

[Upthorn]

Tunic: It's good! Saying virtually anything else about it would spoil something or other, and it's really a game that demands you go in blind.

As far as Tunic goes, I really enjoyed solving the major puzzles, but then found actually using that knowledge (IE: playing the rest of the game) to be too tedious to be worthwhile.

I think I would have finished it if there'd been slightly more plentiful fast-travel points, and/or combat had been more purely based on NES/SNES Zelda games, instead of having half-baked Dark Souls (stamina, parry, dodge-roll) influence.

[nosimpleway]

Replayed Pikmin and Pikmin 2, figured while I've got the emulator out I'd redo Metroid Prime while I was at it.

And all three games are just... get to the end, and completely lose any interest in actually finishing the damn game. I used to enjoy this! These used to be some hot shit! But now when I get to Final Trial, or Dream Den, or the fight with Meta-Ridley I just can't be arsed.

so hey while I'm probing whatever is up with my anhedonia what happens if I play a game that I remember not liking? I got through the first area of Metroid Prime 2 and I think I'm done with it, too. So, uh, that saves some time I guess.

[nosimpleway]

Samus, aiming a charged Light Beam: You reform yourself out of that puddle and get in my way I'm gonna unload all this hot white goodness right into your face
Ing warrior: can you please not say it like that

[nosimpleway]

Missile Expansion
Scour the map for it, again!
Ninety-nine percent

[Thad]

The thing about Pentiment is I can't stop thinking "this is the South Park engine" and it's distracting.

[Thad]

It's kinda wild how regressive Yakuza 0's politics are, especially after playing Like a Dragon, the game where you play a gaggle of homeless misfits, including a guy who just got out of prison and another who got drummed out of his job as a cop because he tried to expose corruption on the force, alternately looking for work and trying to protect sex workers and other social undesirables against demonization and violence.

In Yakuza 0, by contrast, I've played a sidequest where a director who overworks his employees is treated as a visionary who pushes them because he just cares so much about the quality of his art, and the workers who protest his behavior are malcontent troublemakers, and another where you meet with a politician and discuss appropriate products to impose a sales tax on (there is no option for "sales taxes are regressive as fuck; make the rich pay their fair share instead").

I don't know if it's intentional, but it's actually an interesting way of capturing the political zeitgeist of the two games' respective eras (at least, assuming Japan's seen political shifts broadly similar to the US); 0 is set in 1988 and LaD is set in 2019.

In Yakuza 0, you meet a cop whose tragic backstory is about how the criminal justice system is insufficiently harsh to juvenile offenders who commit heinous acts, and how it took vigilantism to get him the justice he deserved.

In Yakuza: Like a Dragon, you meet a cop whose tragic backstory is about his guilt for being complicit in a frameup that resulted in the death of an innocent man, and how he's spent years trying to make up for some of the harm he's done.

[Thad]

Okay, so.

You've got one arm, you're (by your own admission) not a very good driver, and you're rich, so you can pretty much buy whatever ride you want.

And so you pick...a sports car that definitely has a manual transmission, and also it's a fucking import that's got the wheel on the left even though every other car in Japan has it on the right.

I'm thinking either Tachibana isn't the brilliant tactician he's presented as, or he's lying about that "not a very good driver" thing.

[nosimpleway]

Coming off of another run of Hades into Dad of Boy: Not Ragnarok Yet. I guess I'm just on a kick for games about emotionally distant Greek gods who scornfully call their offspring "boy" instead of their given name.

The opening cutscene depicts Kratos rebandaging his forearms in a pretty clear portrayal of how he's hiding his past from his son. Then he hefts the entire trunk of the tree he just felled and carries it away over his shoulder. Nope, no divine superpowers here!

I like how the entrance to the first temple area is the first time you can see a chest and an item spot glowing on the ground, but you can't reach them yet because K refuses to hop down off the bridge he's on and walk a short distance away to get them. The script read at this point is him scolding "We go where we wish, boy. No excuses."
Like, that has to be intentional, right

[Niku]

i started the ragnarok one and then realized i just Wasn't Feeling It Right Now so i've put it on the backburner (maybe this week actually) but my favorite thing i've heard is apparently the other characters traveling with you just never ever stop busting his balls about kratos being a greedy little treasure freak who wanders off the beaten path at a moment's notice to grab two fuckin greek pennies

[nosimpleway]

Damned if I can remember where I saw it linked in the first place and it's not like I have a ton of options for where to look so I assume it was from somewhere around here, but anyway I did a run of Legend of Zelda: Ancient Dungeon and uh

You remember that run of the FF4 randomizer I did a while back where it was like "Man, I hate how this Final Fantasy game has all this dialog and story development why can't I just fight a shitton of random encounters until the game ends"

it's basically like that. It's the first Legend of Zelda where any sort of meaningful choice has been removed.

You start in a dungeon with three hearts, the wood sword, and arrows but no bow. When you room transition the doors in the next room slam shut until you kill the monsters. Then you go to a different room, which is also randomly generated. Once in a while a room will drop something. Once in a while-er that thing will be a meaningful treasure instead of a heart. Sometimes the next room is a shop selling one item for a random price. Every dozen rooms or so is a boss rewarding a heart container, ending with Ganon in room 254 and Zelda in room 255.

The game does not keep track of where you've been, so if you go back through the door you came in, what should logically be an empty room you just cleared out has a different layout and monsters. So really there's no difference between which door you use to exit a room. There's never a choice for what your upgrades are, you either pick up whatever the room decided to give you, or you don't (or in the case of the game offering a shop, maybe you can't afford it).

Making a game into a roguelike shell of itself is more than just randomly-generated rooms and permadeath. Sometimes you have to offer the player a strategic choice to make, you know?

[Mongrel]

There's always The Only Winning Move!

[nosimpleway]

"stick sword out in front of you" technique remains undefeated

[nosimpleway]

It's not like I'm going to keep playing Dad of Boy while my daughter is around to see it so I did another run of Zeldo: This Labyrinth Is Old, Yo

I found the one Magic Shield in the run after room 180, got the Blue Ring post room 200, and the game just sort of forgot that there were sword upgrades to be had at all. Good thing bonking stuff with the magic wand is the same as a White Sword hit up til the last boss! Blue Darknuts, Blue Wizzrobes, and blue Lynels start showing up around room 125, for the record.

The sliding spike traps have been removed from the game, according to the dev, because it's unfair with some room layouts where just opposite the entrance door is a wall or a pool of water, and Link has to take the hit. No ducking back in the door, remember, all the doors in the mod are shutters. Which makes sense! The game has no qualms about doing the same shit with Wizzrobes, though... which do four times as much damage as the spike traps.

The raft, croissant, and magic key have been removed from the game, since there's no need for them whatsoever. Probably the bait too? Dark rooms have been eliminated, so you can skip the candles. You won't come across a room you have to cross water to clear until you have the Ladder, so you can skip the Ladder. You won't run into Digdogger until you have the Recorder, so you can skip the Recorder. The book wasn't even useful in vanilla, so w/e
Gotta get the bow when you see it since you still need the Silver Arrows to win the game. Silver Arrows themselves are a forced drop in room 252.
So you go "okay nice thank you game" when you get a sword, a ring, or a Heart Container, and kind of scoff at everything else? Potions are nice when the game decides to throw six blue Wizzrobes at you when you have no rings and the crap sword but really you'd rather just get the ring.

[nosimpleway]

It's kind of weird to come at a game like Dad of Boy after a game like Tunic. Tunic just throws you into the world and lets you find everything out for yourself. Dad of Boy gives you about ten seconds between "here is a puzzle" and Boy starting to bark hints at you.

"A riddle..." "Maybe there's a clue around here somewhere!" "Yes boy, I have played a video game before."
So you climb up the well-marked climbable cliffs nearby and find a trigger and activate it. The three giant plates with runes on them that you've been trying to open starts to move. "It's turning!" "Yes, boy, I have eyes."
The holes in the plates reveal targets. I'm already aiming a throw when Boy goes "Maybe you could freeze those!" "Yes, boy. I know because they look like every other THROW AXE HERE TO FREEZE SOMETHING target we've seen."
So I throw the axe, hit the target. One of the plates stops spinning. "Maybe if you line up the runes--" "BOY. SHUT. UP."

I've had some of the story beats spoiled for me but god damn. I didn't know Atreus transforms into the Master Sword at the end in order to help future generations battle the minions of Demise's curse.

[nosimpleway]

Dad of Boy is resurfacing the fucky thumbstick issues I'd had previously, so I'm gonna have to shelve it for now. I wonder if, like, phone-repair shops clean out controllers. It doesn't seem like a complicated job, it's just one that I don't have the tools to do.

[Thad]

It's definitely reinforcing my sense that I love exploring open worlds and hate it when shit happens that interrupts me doing it.

Took me a surprisingly long time to hit that point in Yakuza 0, but I'm at the "finishing up my business affairs before I fuck off to the endgame" portion of the game and I'm sick of getting interrupted by combat now.

Part of the problem is the sense that it doesn't matter anymore. Yakuza 0 doesn't have XP, you just upgrade your abilities with money, and (as in Like a Dragon and, I assume, the rest of the series I haven't played) the real money comes from the business management minigame, not combat.

[Thad]

The end of Yakuza 0 where Makoto encounters Majima on the street but doesn't know him would be a lot more effective if they hadn't had that earlier conversation where he told her he only had one eye. Instead it kinda just makes it seem like she's stupid.

[nosimpleway]

Shifting threads from Game Hacks, talkin' 'bout FF6 T-Edition, gonna be referencing Thad's initial impressions from 22 3/4.

The new sprites based on the original Nomura art are fine, I guess. Except Celes seems like a gigantic head on a willowy body in ways that the original sprite didn't. I'm not sure why, or whether that's based on any changes to the sprite itself or all in my head.

Some of the item and technique abbreviations seem baffling, too. Quick, what's "G.Potpri" and what does it do? If you guessed "Gyshal Potpourri" and that it prevents Silence and Sleep, good job! And also what is wrong with you. Looking forward to netting the Chirijiradenshokuken, because presumably it's not "Sky Render" anymore.

Regarding Rages: Judging from what I've looked up, Catscratch (replaced with Kitty Kick or Kitty Punch, depending) has been nerfed to do only 2.5x damage rather than 4x. Best you can do is some bird listed here as "Nighthawk" with a special that does 3.5x damage. Failing that, Hell Rider (the guy running back and forth in front of Kefka in the Narshe fields) or Domovoi or Behemoth give a special that do 3x. For my money and at the point I'm at, though, Gau's crazy overinflated HP make the White Wind off of Rudras (outside Kohlingen) a good choice. His magic-based Rages seem to be significantly less good than in vanilla. Normally Belmodar (or whatever they're calling it, casts Thundara) can make short work of Opera House Ultros, but here it did about as much damage as a physical hit.

During the opera fight, the audience will chime in with various jeers or praise, with attacks to match. They might sneer at Locke's ability to land the leading lady and throw a Wrench at him, or say Ultros needs help and give him a free Pray/Cura. At one point all present got hit with a weak Zeninage, followed by Impresario begging the audience not to hurl money at the actors.

Thad mentioned in the other thread that there's a quest in Albrook to encourage you to visit Maranda and Tzen when you get to the southern continent. This is presumably in place because they removed the actual reason you might want to go, namely that the shops sell slightly better gear in those towns than Albrook does. The guy in Albrook who still says there's better gear out there? A lying liar, who lies! Tzen in particular has a full suite of Mythril crap.

[nosimpleway]

You walk into the Magitek Research facility control room and notice one of the tubes is conspicuously empty. Bismark can just fuck right off, I guess. Then when you collect the magicite shards from the espers there, you get five -- and only three appear in your menu list. As Thad said, you have to fight Catoblepas and Carbunkle later on, for no real reason other than "they were fights in FF5 but Maduin and Unicorn and Phantom weren't." So apparently the law from FF4 that summons have to fight you is fully in effect, and I assume there will be no more freebies.

Catoblepas can be cheesed by putting on petrify-resist equipment, as you might expect. But if he tries to Dread Gaze twice and nobody's petrified by that point, he uses an attack called Raging Rush three times for like 1500+ damage each time. Not even Gau and Sabin have that kind of HP. So don't make everyone immune, I guess.

Carbunkle I haven't figured out because wow, he's fast. I get wiped before I can figure out any holes in his gimmick.

On that topic Seraphim opens with "whoa there are so many of you" and wastes everyone with Saint Beam, so mental note to go back and try that with a not-entirely-full party sometime, see how that goes.

#128 was my first Game Over, since he managed to roll Net three times in a row and everyone was helplessly Stopped while he regenerated his claws and killed everyone. That's not even added in the hack, it's happened to me before in vanilla. The Cranes have death counters where they use fire/electric magic to heal one another, or even Phoenix Down the other one if it's already gone. That is the sort of pain in the ass I expect from a fanhack.

I need a spot to grind up some levels, magic, and cash. I fear the best place for it is just "the next dungeon you're going to anyway".

[Thad]

I described how I beat Seraphim and Carbuncle in the other thread, FWIW.

Though I didn't actually do it until I'd spent some time in the cave to the sealed gate.

I think "wherever you're going next anyway" is probably your best bet for grinding, yeah.