What are you currently playing?

[Dalisclock]

I recently played a bit of Scholar of the First Sin for the first time and really didn't like it. I finished the original Dark Souls 2 4 or 5 times, but picking it up this time just felt bad. Everything felt slow and sluggish just felt off. I kept plugging away at it and then like 12 hours in I remembered that Adaptability was a thing. By that point though I really didn't feel like continuing to play even though I knew what the problem was and how to fix it.

DS2 really shit the bed in a few regards. The life gem system is terrible, and the adaptability stat makes the beginning a huge chore until you dump like 20 levels into it.

For me it was DS2 feels really Janky a lot of the time and parts of it feel very unfinished(There's substational evidence it was extremely rushed and unfinished due to a very troubled dev cycle), especially in the World/level design. The DLC fixes a lot of these problems but the base game the areas go from great to awful almost at random.

And then there's the cut and paste boss design which also doesn't help. Oh, there's the Dragon rider....a giant dude in Armor. Get to the castle, meet the queen, and then....oh....there's the dragon rider again, but now there's two of them because coming up with something interesting was apparently too hard or something.

And of course, What if SIF were a big poison rat-dog? Yeah, I'm looking at you, Royal Rat Authority.

I don't hate DS2 and I admire it tried to be different then Dark Souls, but sadly the execution ended up being a bit lacking. Whereas Dark Souls 3 ended up being very rooted in the first game but fairly well polished and the parts that got reworked(Darth Pope getting demoted from Final Boss to just a boss) don't feel nearly as egregious as DS2.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

For me it was DS2 feels really Janky a lot of the time and parts of it feel very unfinished(There's substational evidence it was extremely rushed and unfinished due to a very troubled dev cycle), especially in the World/level design. The DLC fixes a lot of these problems but the base game the areas go from great to awful almost at random.

And then there's the cut and paste boss design which also doesn't help. Oh, there's the Dragon rider....a giant dude in Armor. Get to the castle, meet the queen, and then....oh....there's the dragon rider again, but now there's two of them because coming up with something interesting was apparently too hard or something.

And of course, What if SIF were a big poison rat-dog? Yeah, I'm looking at you, Royal Rat Authority.

I don't hate DS2 and I admire it tried to be different then Dark Souls, but sadly the execution ended up being a bit lacking. Whereas Dark Souls 3 ended up being very rooted in the first game but fairly well polished and the parts that got reworked(Darth Pope getting demoted from Final Boss to just a boss) don't feel nearly as egregious as DS2.

There's a lot to be said about the problems with DS2 with regards to world and level design and how much they'll bother you. For example, a lot of people have a huge problem with the fact that the world isn't interconnected the way that Dark Souls 1 was, but I really don't mind it.

Dark Souls 1's map is very impressive in how dense and intricate it is, but it also doesn't make any sense as a functional world. Once you've gone back and forth a few times you start to notice just how small the area actually is. There's multiple completely separate cities within a few hundred meters of one another. Dark Souls 2, since the areas are more separated actually makes you feel like you're exploring the whole country of Drangleic rather than just a tiny corner of it.

When I said that the primary 2 issues with Dark Souls 2 are the lifegems and the adaptability stat, I meant that solely from a mechanical point of view, not to say that those are the only problems with the game as a whole.

 

[Dalisclock]

There's a lot to be said about the problems with DS2 with regards to world and level design and how much they'll bother you. For example, a lot of people have a huge problem with the fact that the world isn't interconnected the way that Dark Souls 1 was, but I really don't mind it.

Oh, I do appreciate the apparent scale. It's more that the transitions are very patchy and abrupt that bother me a lot more. For examples, you can see Heides Tower of Flame from Majula, then go down a tunnel and look back and the distance doesn't look remotely the same from that side, not to mention the amount of vertical distance to enter and leave the tunnel is also noticably off. I'm not even gonna bother mentioning the infamous windmill elevator because everyone knows about how fucking wierd that one is.

It feels like they could have done a better job of papering over the transitions so you wouldn't notice(unless you were really looking). Dark Souls 3 feels more spread out like Dark Souls 2 does(but it's really not) but it's better at fooling your perception by using models and scaling correctly.

And you're right, Dark Souls 1 world is actually really small in terms of actual distance covered but the perceived and actual distances covered don't feel jarring

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

Oh, I do appreciate the apparent scale. It's more that the transitions are very patchy and abrupt that bother me a lot more. For examples, you can see Heides Tower of Flame from Majula, then go down a tunnel and look back and the distance doesn't look remotely the same from that side, not to mention the amount of vertical distance to enter and leave the tunnel is also noticably off. I'm not even gonna bother mentioning the infamous windmill elevator because everyone knows about how fucking wierd that one is.

And you're right, Dark Souls 1 world is actually really small in terms of actual distance covered but the perceived and actual distances covered don't feel jarring

My personal internal canon for Dark Souls 2 is that due to your character's gradual hollowing we aren't actually experiencing the full distance traveled between each point. There's actually hours or even days of travel between the different locations that the player character doesn't remember, they just kind of wake up out of a trance and they're there. That's why the transitions are so abrupt, because you're missing most of the journey due to your unreliable memory.

That's my explanation and I'm sticking to it.

 

[Dalisclock]

My personal internal canon for Dark Souls 2 is that due to your character's gradual hollowing we aren't actually experiencing the full distance traveled between each point. There's actually hours or even days of travel between the different locations that the player character doesn't remember, they just kind of wake up out of a trance and they're there. That's why the transitions are so abrupt, because you're missing most of the journey due to your unreliable memory.

That's my explanation and I'm sticking to it.

It's one of the more intriguing interpretations and probably one of the most probable. And it's a hell of a lot more coherent then my failed attempt to nail down a fucking timeline for the major events leading up to Dark Souls 3. I tried, I really did but numerous attempts to fit all the pieces we know happened leading up to the Ashen One waking up ended in total frustration on my part, either because time is too screwy to make any real sense of it by this point or the writers weren't really keeping track of their own lore.

 

[Dreiko]

I recently played a bit of Scholar of the First Sin for the first time and really didn't like it. I finished the original Dark Souls 2 4 or 5 times, but picking it up this time just felt bad. Everything felt slow and sluggish just felt off. I kept plugging away at it and then like 12 hours in I remembered that Adaptability was a thing. By that point though I really didn't feel like continuing to play even though I knew what the problem was and how to fix it.

DS2 really shit the bed in a few regards. The life gem system is terrible, and the adaptability stat makes the beginning a huge chore until you dump like 20 levels into it.

There's this item that lets you respec stuff too so if you mess up your stat allotment you can fix it.


As for the life gems, I generally don't really even need to use them most of the time since I have the regen ring on and esthus suffices. Also having that treasure hunter hat on for increased item drop rate helps keep your weight low in the early bits. Unless you're wearing full heavy armor and are sporting a fat shield too it shouldn't be that big of a deal early on.

The pellets in Sekiro aren't an issue since you can only carry 3. The lifegems are a problem because you can carry 99 of each type meaning you can always heal between every fight. If they wanted you to do that when what was the point of only giving you one estus flask to start with? It completely undercuts the entire design of the early game.

The pellets in Sekiro are a crutch for learning the combat. If you had a bad engagement you get another mostly free try at it without having to waste a full heal, but you get a limited number per attempt. Lifegems on the other hand let you ignore any and all damage taken on the way to a boss.

It's a significant problem in Demon's Souls as well, which is why the remake limits you to how much grass you can carry, but also Demon's Souls is in general a much more forgiving game.

Sekiro has that skill that lets you heal for each kill you pull off so you wouldn't really use the pellets for that anyways, they're there for the super hard boss fights if anything.

But yeah theoretically you could have a hundred life gems but the soul waste that that entails is terrible XD.

Ultimately for me they just replace the need to put stats on faith and attunement to learn the healing miracles.

 

[CriticalGaming]

@Nick Calandra . How is this thread not a pin yet?

 

[Nick Calandra]

@Nick Calandra . How is this thread not a pin yet?

Done.

 

[Dreiko]

Oh right forgot to mention, I don't think I've put points in Adaptability in DS2, I'm at maybe 10ish? (I started as a warrior and may have put like 1-2 points early on cause I was trying things out).


What is it supposedly that it does? It's just defense and resistances right? I've been wearing that armor set you find after the flying knight boss that upgrades with twinkle titanite so my defenses feel solid enough. Is it for resisting poisons more?



(also lol I couldn't find this topic cause it was stickied)

 

[sXeth]

Beat the Outriders campaign.


Yeesh that final bosses first phase was just ugly. Fighting in a broom closet with a dude who can arbitrarily spam his turret summons til theres like 16 of them.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Finished Kingdom Hearts Final Mix in 6 hours, got my 5,000th trophy and 56th Platinum.
The speedrun itself isn't that hard. You're given 15 hours, and if you're playing on easy mode and know what you're doing it's more than enough. You shave tons of hours by skipping cutscenes and avoiding all the optional worlds (100 Acre Wood, Olympus Coliseum, Atlantica). What makes it challenging towards the end is if you're coupling the trophy with Unchanging Armor, which means doing the whole game without changing equipment. It's possible to tank a lot of fights, but damage output is pissweak. The final fight with Ansem is bad enough that it goes on forever, and it feels like I have to kill him with paper cuts.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

Oh right forgot to mention, I don't think I've put points in Adaptability in DS2, I'm at maybe 10ish? (I started as a warrior and may have put like 1-2 points early on cause I was trying things out).


What is it supposedly that it does? It's just defense and resistances right? I've been wearing that armor set you find after the flying knight boss that upgrades with twinkle titanite so my defenses feel solid enough. Is it for resisting poisons more?



(also lol I couldn't find this topic cause it was stickied)

Adaptability has nothing to do with defense. It modifies the agility stat which determines how many i-frames you get off your roll, and governs poise.

It also slightly changes the speed at which you finish the healing animation, and the speed at which you raise and lower your shield when guarding.

Basically, throwing points into it helps make the game feel more fluid and less clunky.

 

[Dalisclock]

Sekiro has that skill that lets you heal for each kill you pull off so you wouldn't really use the pellets for that anyways, they're there for the super hard boss fights if anything.

Which is nice for non-boss battle areas but Boss arenas where that skill would be the most useful because you can skip like 90% of the regular enemies if you know the levels.

 

[happyninja42]

Finished The Surge this morning. It ended with basically just a setup for Surge 2. I'm not really sure what I was supposed to have accomplished? I mean, I made a choice when it came to the final event, and it was framed as being significant. But, it didn't seem to have any impact on the ending. I don't know if there is actually more story in the NG+ , but I honestly don't know if I'll try that just to see it. Especially since, after having started Surge 2, the ending of 1 clearly segues into the opening for 2. And it didn't seem to have any impact that I'm aware of. The game didn't say anything like "Hey, we see you have a Surge 1 savefile, would you like to export those choices to impact Surge 2?" like a lot of games will do. So....yeah seriously, what is the point of the choices at the end of surge 1? Anyone that's played it mind clarifying? Specifically the one where I installed the virus into the nano-mass to stop it from destroying humanity...yet it still seemed to be released and start fucking people up in the mid-credit scene where you hear it talking and killing people. Is there actually more content and choices for the main plot in the NG+ ?

Started Surge 2, as stated.

It's more of Surge 1, but in an open city, so that's nice. Having more to look at around me, instead of just interior walls walls everywhere is enjoyable.

Was depressed by the fact that the game, pre-covid, had a disturbingly familiar sounding viral plague plot, and a city in lockdown as a result. Also, you run into a character very early on, that's basically just a signpost npc, to point you to the next quest. But he's dressed up like a techno-priest. Ridiculous clothing and ornamentation, and a big spear/staff that looks like a religious staff. He rambles about The Spark, and how it will save the chosen, and bring divinity and all that shit. Your typical insane street preacher, but just a scifi one. And keep in mind, Surge 2 takes place only TWO MONTHS after the shit hits the fan, and they've already devolved into ridiculous techno-cults, and wearing stupid outfits. And, pre- Jan 6th, I would've thought this babbling lunatic was a joke, and completely unrealistic. But all I kept thinking as he went on, was that fucking qanon shaman, and all his fuckwads. And it felt depressingly real. Still incredibly stupid, but no longer fictionally stupid.

 

[Dreiko]

Adaptability has nothing to do with defense. It modifies the agility stat which determines how many i-frames you get off your roll, and governs poise.

It also slightly changes the speed at which you finish the healing animation, and the speed at which you raise and lower your shield when guarding.

Basically, throwing points into it helps make the game feel more fluid and less clunky.

Hmm I see, I guess I just took the "clunk" as just how the game is and didn't give it much thought, just got used to working with what it gave me. Slow rolls do feel pretty bad though so I guess it affected my putting a ton of points in vitality and only going chunky when I was planning to just block a lot.

 

[Dalisclock]

FInished my replay of Ace Combat 7(including the DLC missions with the supersub). My feeling are mostly the same as before. Great gameplay, beastiful presentation, fun missions(mostly) but the plot is jumps between servicable and patchy as fuck, with a notable drop in writing quality in the latter half of the game. I'm damn certain the 2nd half was rewritten from the original concept(likely Trigger being part of Spare from till the end of the game) because there's a bunch of stuff that just seems off as it stands now(notably references and lines of dialogue that don't seem to connect to anything, in some cases it's really noticable too). Also, some of the late game cutscenes are SUPER Melodramatic and oh my god I wanted Cosette and Avril to shut up for a while by the end(plus I didn't much care what they were doing considering everything else going on....which is WAY too much).

The DLC missions are still good and form a nice tight arc that's separate from the main game, and Pirate Torres is a good villain in his own right. The only part that annoyed me were the bits where everyone started treating Trigger as a fucking flying demi-god(which is a problem in the base game as well). Like, yes, we know it's always one fucking pilot who saves everyone's ass but the other games aren't so fucking blatant about it. Maybe they realized the "Demon Lord" and "Demons of Ragriz" titles were already taken so they had to make Trigger a fucking mary sue or something.

And the Alicorn is still the most obnoxious boss in the entire series, aside from the Morgan in Zero, which was made of Plot armor and stuffed with 70 million murder missiles and a giant laser and can launch V2 because Pixy hates Borders and overpriced coffee. In this case it's a sub made of plot armor and stuffed with 70 million murder missiles and 50 railguns and a giant cannon because Torres went mad from watching nothing but Anime and Marine-chan while he was stuck underwater for 2 years.

Anyway, I'll be moving on to Genesis Noir soon, which will be a nice change of pace.

 

[Schadrach]

Took a break from Death Stranding (I'm only up to Port Knot City) because I saw a Minecraft modpack that caught my eye - Brass. It's a 1.16-based modpack built around progression from Survivalist->Create->Immersive Engineering->Mekanism. Spun up a server if anyone's interested.

Once I get burned out on Minecraft again I'll go back to Death Stranding, then likely RDR2. I grabbed them both cheap at a pawn shop a while ago.

 

[happyninja42]

Ok so I've been playing Surge 2 for a few days, and, for anyone who has played it....am I fucking crazy, or did they just straight up steal some of the ambient music from Deus Ex: Human Revolution for one of their zones? Port Nixon specifically is the zone where I keep hearing it. And I'll be damn if that's not straight up Michael McCann's music for...I think one of Hong Kong's ambient zone background songs. It freaks me out every time I hear it.

Game is fine so far, still having fun playing it. I am annoyed at how much metroidvania style "you must have X to go this way" they have in this one. Especially the hook. I just got my "going down hook", and was excited. However, so far, it's mostly only given me yet another way to traverse to areas....that I've already been. The first 3 wires you come across actually, when you find the hook, do nothing but let you quickly get back to the beginning of the area you got the hook in. Well...thank you very fucking much game, but I had other shit to do in this zone, and now I have to fucking backtrack all the way back. ALSO, your little tutorial box hypes this item as "explore new areas previous locked to you!" ....and I am hard pressed to find any "new" areas at all. It's just shortcuts to places I already had shortcuts to.

 

[BrawlMan]

Finished The Surge this morning. It ended with basically just a setup for Surge 2. I'm not really sure what I was supposed to have accomplished? I mean, I made a choice when it came to the final event, and it was framed as being significant. But, it didn't seem to have any impact on the ending. I don't know if there is actually more story in the NG+ , but I honestly don't know if I'll try that just to see it. Especially since, after having started Surge 2, the ending of 1 clearly segues into the opening for 2. And it didn't seem to have any impact that I'm aware of. The game didn't say anything like "Hey, we see you have a Surge 1 savefile, would you like to export those choices to impact Surge 2?" like a lot of games will do. So....yeah seriously, what is the point of the choices at the end of surge 1? Anyone that's played it mind clarifying? Specifically the one where I installed the virus into the nano-mass to stop it from destroying humanity...yet it still seemed to be released and start fucking people up in the mid-credit scene where you hear it talking and killing people. Is there actually more content and choices for the main plot in the NG+ ?

Started Surge 2, as stated.

It's more of Surge 1, but in an open city, so that's nice. Having more to look at around me, instead of just interior walls walls everywhere is enjoyable.

Was depressed by the fact that the game, pre-covid, had a disturbingly familiar sounding viral plague plot, and a city in lockdown as a result. Also, you run into a character very early on, that's basically just a signpost npc, to point you to the next quest. But he's dressed up like a techno-priest. Ridiculous clothing and ornamentation, and a big spear/staff that looks like a religious staff. He rambles about The Spark, and how it will save the chosen, and bring divinity and all that shit. Your typical insane street preacher, but just a scifi one. And keep in mind, Surge 2 takes place only TWO MONTHS after the shit hits the fan, and they've already devolved into ridiculous techno-cults, and wearing stupid outfits. And, pre- Jan 6th, I would've thought this babbling lunatic was a joke, and completely unrealistic. But all I kept thinking as he went on, was that fucking qanon shaman, and all his fuckwads. And it felt depressingly real. Still incredibly stupid, but no longer fictionally stupid.

Funny enough, it's the same thing that happened with The Purge films. Everyday reality became closer to The Purge. Especially Anarchy and Election Year. The latter even has an ending where people riot because they feel their victory or election was "stolen" from them. I still enjoy the movies though. Except for the first one.

 

[BrawlMan]

I played some more Devil May Cry 5 after not touching it for a while. I've completed World 3 in Super Mario Bros 3D World. Currently in the middle of world 4, and I'll finish it when I get home.