Expeditions: Rome
So I finally finished Act 2 and started Act 3, and my feelings are still mixed. I am digging the story that drives the campaigns and missions, with all sorts of Roman Political and cultural stuff(if you play a woman, you have to get married to have any actual political power and influence, which tracks, despite the fact you're an accomplished Legate by this point with two successful military campaigns under your belt). However, some bits are weird. When you go to Rome the 2nd time and do character quest, one of them involves one your party trying to buy the slave who he allegedly knocked up so he can raise the child with her, except the owner knows this and demands an extortionist price for her. You can blackmail him if you have the right skill, pay him off with is straight out robbery, decide it's not worth it, or just kill the fuck and his guards and take his property. Your friend is both disturbed by the fact you just murdered some dude and grateful he can take the mother of (probably) his kid with him. And then you have another quest where another member of your party goes into an underground orgy to kill the man who enslaved her and killed her sister long ago, then agoing on to kill everyone else and said party before leaving.
Where it gets interesting is that the character who goes on the murder spree ends up in prison awaiting executing, but you killing the rich dude and his guard and essentially annexing his property has no repercussions at all despite your friends protests that you've just committed a crime, and it's never really explained why you're able to get away with it but the other character isn't. Especially since the party you massacre was an underground, illegal gathering there weren't exactly a ton of witnesses.
Anyway, one more campaign to go and it's the endgame.
In the meantime, I also started playing Demons Souls Remake.
It's better then I remember the PS3 version being by a bit, much more responsive(on par with more recent FROM games) and I managed to make it through 1-1 without dying(to be fair, I'd managed to get through 1-1 before on the PS3 version, so I actually remembered some of the traps(like the stone ball one). Or maybe because I've played enough of these games I'm wise to all the tricks by now. The fact your healing is limited only by the amount of healing grass you have feels almost broken because all you have to do is back off from a fight long enough to chug one and that shit seems to drop everywhere, so it's hypothetically possible to outlast anyone as long as you don't get too greedy and bring enough grass to a fight.
And I gotta say, the game looks fucking lovely,. Boletaria castle is a wonderful mix of a fantasy castle and a castle that looks like it could not only exist, but also be very defensible(the long causeway in 1-2 would be especially awful to try to assault and I remember it from last time I played.
On a lesser note, now that I remember the game takes ALL weight into account, so anything not needed soon should be put in storage, it does seem like the Storage box from Dark Souls is a holdover from this game that really doesn't have much use in later games because you can effectively have unlimited inventory and you'll probably sell everything you don't need anyway. And I so find it interesting the Knight NPC you meet in 1-1 can walk through the level and kill enemies on his own, but most of the later Souls games....don't really do that. You pretty much have to summon an NPC, often in a particular circumstance, to have them help you out and often only for a boss. Even the regular NPCs will flat out stand there until you've triggered their flag to move elsewhere and then they just vanish without ever seeing them walk off.
So I finally finished Act 2 and started Act 3, and my feelings are still mixed. I am digging the story that drives the campaigns and missions, with all sorts of Roman Political and cultural stuff(if you play a woman, you have to get married to have any actual political power and influence, which tracks, despite the fact you're an accomplished Legate by this point with two successful military campaigns under your belt). However, some bits are weird. When you go to Rome the 2nd time and do character quest, one of them involves one your party trying to buy the slave who he allegedly knocked up so he can raise the child with her, except the owner knows this and demands an extortionist price for her. You can blackmail him if you have the right skill, pay him off with is straight out robbery, decide it's not worth it, or just kill the fuck and his guards and take his property. Your friend is both disturbed by the fact you just murdered some dude and grateful he can take the mother of (probably) his kid with him. And then you have another quest where another member of your party goes into an underground orgy to kill the man who enslaved her and killed her sister long ago, then agoing on to kill everyone else and said party before leaving.
Where it gets interesting is that the character who goes on the murder spree ends up in prison awaiting executing, but you killing the rich dude and his guard and essentially annexing his property has no repercussions at all despite your friends protests that you've just committed a crime, and it's never really explained why you're able to get away with it but the other character isn't. Especially since the party you massacre was an underground, illegal gathering there weren't exactly a ton of witnesses.
Anyway, one more campaign to go and it's the endgame.
In the meantime, I also started playing Demons Souls Remake.
It's better then I remember the PS3 version being by a bit, much more responsive(on par with more recent FROM games) and I managed to make it through 1-1 without dying(to be fair, I'd managed to get through 1-1 before on the PS3 version, so I actually remembered some of the traps(like the stone ball one). Or maybe because I've played enough of these games I'm wise to all the tricks by now. The fact your healing is limited only by the amount of healing grass you have feels almost broken because all you have to do is back off from a fight long enough to chug one and that shit seems to drop everywhere, so it's hypothetically possible to outlast anyone as long as you don't get too greedy and bring enough grass to a fight.
And I gotta say, the game looks fucking lovely,. Boletaria castle is a wonderful mix of a fantasy castle and a castle that looks like it could not only exist, but also be very defensible(the long causeway in 1-2 would be especially awful to try to assault and I remember it from last time I played.
On a lesser note, now that I remember the game takes ALL weight into account, so anything not needed soon should be put in storage, it does seem like the Storage box from Dark Souls is a holdover from this game that really doesn't have much use in later games because you can effectively have unlimited inventory and you'll probably sell everything you don't need anyway. And I so find it interesting the Knight NPC you meet in 1-1 can walk through the level and kill enemies on his own, but most of the later Souls games....don't really do that. You pretty much have to summon an NPC, often in a particular circumstance, to have them help you out and often only for a boss. Even the regular NPCs will flat out stand there until you've triggered their flag to move elsewhere and then they just vanish without ever seeing them walk off.
