What are you currently playing?

[Silvanus]

Played Hoa, a cute, simple puzzle-platformer to start the year. Very easy but lovely visual design.

Now on Yooka Laylee and the Impossible Lair. The original 3D Yooka Laylee was the only game I've backed on Kickstarter, as a massive childhood fan of Banjo Kazooie, Banjo Tooie, and the first 3 Donkey Kong Country games... but I didn't really enjoy Yooka Laylee. Felt awkward and janky to control, and lacklustre.

Happy to say Impossible Lair is a lot more fun. Got 46 of the 48 bees and am now properly attempting the titular Impossible Lair... which is an absurd difficulty spike. Nothing else in the entire game even approached this difficulty!?

 

[Bartholen]

Cleared the Dalish and the werewolves quest in Dragon Age, so I've finally stepped into content I haven't seen before. Having finally "gotten" this game, it's giving me everything I like about RPGs. I feel I can just get lost in this world for hours and hours, finding all the little nooks and crannies and parsing through the lore. The characters are starting to get fleshed out (Morrigan winning Biggest Cûnt in the Universe Award time after time) and the combat doesn't actively annoy me anymore, it's passable. I still have absolutely no idea what the supposed benefits of this system are supposed to be, and I just feel bad for the animators and artists: they made all these designs, animations and effects, but when combat happens I see none of it, because my eyes are glued to everyone's health bars and cooldowns. I have to pause the game so frequently that the combat resembles a Powerpoint presentation. It might as well be Dragon Quest in terms of how much the visuals matter. What a waste.

I'm playing this with a few mods, chief among which is a lighting improvement mod. It's astonishing just how much more detail mere lighting changes can bring out in this game that didn't look that good even by the standards of its time. Without the lighting mod on everything looks really soft, blurry and flat, and with it everything becomes razor sharp and colourful. With a single button the game jumps forward an entire console generation. It's like those remasters that let you flip between old graphics and new.

 

[Worgen]

Beat a really hard stage in Starship Troopers. Like holy fuck, there were 3 main hives that needed to be taken out and they would spawn attack waves every minute so you had to have some troops defending the point that needed to be kept and then some trying to get into the hives to bust them. They also added royal guards who can kill a squad of infantry with 2 attacks and they get back up after being killed for like 15 seconds unless you kill them again, and they are really resistant to small arms fire, takes rockets or nades to do them in well. The giant robot Marauders would be decent against them, but there are also a ton of laser scorpions that fuck those up hard core. It was so damn annoying, but I did find out that grenade launcher troopers are the way to go, a bunch of those guys can handle most things, not as well against big guys as rocket troops but better against small guys. They are kinda your kill everything troopers, which is annoying since I want to mix and match my forces, not just be a grenade launcher delivery service.

 

[Bedinsis]

Finished the first Zero Escape game. The plot was captivating enough that I played it through 'til the best ending.

There was a bunch of plot twists at the end, and sadly one of them was a bit too much for me to swallow, and that plot twist was rather central to the overall plot.

Spoiler: discussion about the aforementioned plot twist

So at the end of the day, it turned out the love interest arranged the whole thing. Why?

Because 9 years in the past, she was part of another of these arrangements and was only able to survive by having communication with the player character of the game, 9 years in the future, being in the same situation and relaying that information. It furthermore meant that she could read his experiences (i.e. the player's) and therefore plan the whole thing as she had experienced them.

I have no problem with the distant communication thing; that was well established within the game's fiction. What I however have a much harder time accepting was that it somehow could work through time. That I thought was not well established. It furthermore robs the characters of their agency if "they only did what they did because they saw it being done.". What's more, I don't get why the protagonist in particular was such a good candidate for transmitting information; the experiments in-game involved siblings, not close childhood friends. "Well, she saw it being done so that's why she did it." I suppose is the answer, but I find it unsatisfactory.

 

[Ag3ma]

Ixion

City Builder. Take your space station between solar systems, mine resources, upgrade your ship, keep your plebs happy, save the human race. Almost completely scripted, but it's good work. I think it maybe has a weakness here, because once you work out a few key tactics, the game suddenly turns from very demanding to quite easy.

Elite: Dangerous

This has been going for about 7 years now, but in the latest update The Thargoids have invaded! Total extermination of the human race style invasion. I have killed a few Thargoid Interceptors and traded in my salvage for a cockpit bobblehead. That itch scratched, I might leave them to it and go back exploring.

 

[Drathnoxis]

Finished the first Zero Escape game. The plot was captivating enough that I played it through 'til the best ending.

There was a bunch of plot twists at the end, and sadly one of them was a bit too much for me to swallow, and that plot twist was rather central to the overall plot.

Spoiler: discussion about the aforementioned plot twist

So at the end of the day, it turned out the love interest arranged the whole thing. Why?

Because 9 years in the past, she was part of another of these arrangements and was only able to survive by having communication with the player character of the game, 9 years in the future, being in the same situation and relaying that information. It furthermore meant that she could read his experiences (i.e. the player's) and therefore plan the whole thing as she had experienced them.

I have no problem with the distant communication thing; that was well established within the game's fiction. What I however have a much harder time accepting was that it somehow could work through time. That I thought was not well established. It furthermore robs the characters of their agency if "they only did what they did because they saw it being done.". What's more, I don't get why the protagonist in particular was such a good candidate for transmitting information; the experiments in-game involved siblings, not close childhood friends. "Well, she saw it being done so that's why she did it." I suppose is the answer, but I find it unsatisfactory.

I'm surprised that's the only twist you had a problem with considering the #9 door twist wasn't properly translated and doesn't really work in English, or were you not playing the English version?

I didn't really have a problem with the twist you did, my main problem with 999 was the really flowery narration that constantly described the stuff you were looking at onscreen, but again I'm going to blame the translator for a good deal of the issue. All I can say is that if that twist was too much for you, curb your expectations for the next two games because it only gets more ridiculous from here on out. Also don't expect too much consistency between games or even an actual ending because VLR ends on a cliffhanger. In my opinion 999 is the best of the Zero Escape series for having a complete self contained story that actually ties itself together pretty well.

 

[Bedinsis]

I'm surprised that's the only twist you had a problem with considering the #9 door twist wasn't properly translated and doesn't really work in English, or were you not playing the English version?

I didn't really have a problem with the twist you did, my main problem with 999 was the really flowery narration that constantly described the stuff you were looking at onscreen, but again I'm going to blame the translator for a good deal of the issue. All I can say is that if that twist was too much for you, curb your expectations for the next two games because it only gets more ridiculous from here on out. Also don't expect too much consistency between games or even an actual ending because VLR ends on a cliffhanger. In my opinion 999 is the best of the Zero Escape series for having a complete self contained story that actually ties itself together pretty well.

Well as I wrote in the spoiler there were several things that left me wanting in the game. That twist was however central to the story, and I wrote that post at 1:47 a.m. since, as I wrote, I found the story that captivating. It's possible that there are additional things that if I sit down and analyze I will find wanting. If the twist you refer to is "9" can also be read as "q" then my reaction was more or less "ah, okay, if you say so" though it felt a bit cheesy. Other things I found odd:

Spoiler: spoilers

Why did everyone seem to agree that definitely are only one of each numbered bracelet? The twist that June&Santa always went through the same door thereby hiding that their true numbers did not match the display I thought was brilliant but there was some moment where it's argued that two bracelets could not have had the same number but I was thinking "Why the heck not? If you have made all these bracelets making copies sounds reasonable.".

How did Snake aka 2 end up in that coffin? Was it Santa aka 3 that put him there while arranging for Guy X to be killed?

Incidentally, couldn't the introduction of Guy X had gone down very wrong? What if Ace aka 1 had decided to take his chances and let not-Snake live? That would've upended all of Zero's plans.

Isn't it awfully convenient how many people were part of the original nonary games but have conditions that prevents them from being able to spill the beans? Seven aka 7 had amnesia, Ace aka 1 has face blindness, Snake aka 2 is blind.

In the Safe ending where Junpei reveals why Ace aka 1 must've killed Guy X he managed to figure out an *AWFUL* lot from just the simple verse Clover aka 4 had in her hand.

It felt like a bit of a cop-out that knowledge the player had through playing through different time-lines were somehow transferred onto the player character in the harder-to-reach-endings. Though maybe that should just be thought of as an extension of the underlying science of the setting.

 

[Drathnoxis]

Well as I wrote in the spoiler there were several things that left me wanting in the game. That twist was however central to the story, and I wrote that post at 1:47 a.m. since, as I wrote, I found the story that captivating. It's possible that there are additional things that if I sit down and analyze I will find wanting. If the twist you refer to is "9" can also be read as "q" then my reaction was more or less "ah, okay, if you say so" though it felt a bit cheesy. Other things I found odd:

Spoiler: spoilers

Why did everyone seem to agree that definitely are only one of each numbered bracelet? The twist that June&Santa always went through the same door thereby hiding that their true numbers did not match the display I thought was brilliant but there was some moment where it's argued that two bracelets could not have had the same number but I was thinking "Why the heck not? If you have made all these bracelets making copies sounds reasonable.".

How did Snake aka 2 end up in that coffin? Was it Santa aka 3 that put him there while arranging for Guy X to be killed?

Incidentally, couldn't the introduction of Guy X had gone down very wrong? What if Ace aka 1 had decided to take his chances and let not-Snake live? That would've upended all of Zero's plans.

Isn't it awfully convenient how many people were part of the original nonary games but have conditions that prevents them from being able to spill the beans? Seven aka 7 had amnesia, Ace aka 1 has face blindness, Snake aka 2 is blind.

In the Safe ending where Junpei reveals why Ace aka 1 must've killed Guy X he managed to figure out an *AWFUL* lot from just the simple verse Clover aka 4 had in her hand.

It felt like a bit of a cop-out that knowledge the player had through playing through different time-lines were somehow transferred onto the player character in the harder-to-reach-endings. Though maybe that should just be thought of as an extension of the underlying science of the setting.

It's just occurred to me that you are likely playing a re-release so this might have been fixed. That would also mean that you never got the moment where you need to turn the DS upside down, which is a shame.

Spoiler

In the original Japanese game Zero tells the players to "Seek a door with a q on it" They say this over the speaker with the rest of their instructions. This works because the Japanese word for 9 is pronounced "kyuu" but the door has the English letter q on it. Obviously this doesn't work in English as 9 and Q sound nothing alike so when they localized the game they gave all the players a note that explained that part of the instructions which Junpei reads out loud. That's all well and good, except for when you actually get to the q door they forgot to include the note and instead flash back to the loudspeaker and show Zero speaking the line, making the twist pretty confusing.

Santa and June were organizing the whole thing so it would have to have been one of them who put Snake in the coffin, I don't remember the specifics of who or when they did, though.

A lot of the conveniences in the plot can be explained away from the fact that June has future knowledge. Past Akane was the narrator on one of the screen the entire game (that's why you had to turn the DS upside down when it came time to enter the final puzzle solution) and witnessed the events of the entire game. I don't know how well that came across in the re-releases.

I thought the different timeline knowledge worked really well, and didn't feel like a cop-out at all, since it's central to the whole plot. Junpei needed to experience life threatening peril in order to form his connection to the morphogenetic fields and send his memories through it. All his deaths in the other endings were necessary to strengthen his connection enough that he could connect to past Akane and save her during the first nonary game. I thought it was a pretty clever twist on the VN branching path formula for the time. It worked much better here than in AI, where it didn't really serve any purpose whatsoever and was purely a vestigial plot element that only detracted from the rest of the narrative.

 

[Hawki]

So I beat Sonic Frontiers.

I'm not going to spend much time on my overall thoughts on the game, as I've recorded them elsewhere, but rather, focus mainly on the ending. And yikes, this has got to be one of the most rushed endings ever. (spoiler warning, obviously). I can only assume that the developers ran out of time, because basically, it can be summed up as:

Spoiler

-Sonic defeats Titan

-The End escapes the Titan (this isn't shown, only mentioned)

-Sonic and Sage go up into space, quick speech is given, press a few buttons

-The End is destroyed, Sage apparently sacrifices herself

-Ending cutscenes play.

If that sounds disjointed, it is. We get the ending, the ending song, a post-credits scene, another credits song, then a second post-credits scene. I'd read ahead of time that the ending was rushed, but that didn't compare to actually playing it. To give it something of a fair shake, I did watch the hard mode ending, which does involve something approaching a final fight, in that you actually control Sage and the Titan in a bullet hell segment that has the End actually have a presence, so to speak. I'm not replaying the game just to do this however, and while plenty of games have locked content behind certain conditions being met (hell, the series itself has done that), it does leave a particuarly bitter taste here, since the hard ending, while not perfect, does flow more naturally and give the game a better climax. Also helps that, without hyperbole, the End's monologue that plays through the fight may be one of the best end-villain monologues in a game, EVER (at least in terms of script, delivery's more up in the air). It also helps that the final shots of this fight, regardless of ending, are absolutely gorgeous, with Super Sonic appearing akin to a shooting star from the surface, and the meteor shower that results from the End's destruction. It's just that without the full fight, there's not enough buildup to this climax.

I'm going to throw in some random wider thoughts here before wrapping up, so on that note:

-I've commented before (I think) that a key theme, or at least motif, of Sonic Frontiers is death. That being said, I've come across the idea that I don't necessarily agree with, but want to give a fair shake. This ties in with the death theme, but there's the idea of The End representing death itself, that the Ancients were literally trying to outrun death by fleeing to Earth, but in the end, so can't outrun death forever, so they made their stand, were nearly wiped out, and all they could do was apparently delay death, not defeat it, by sealing the End in cyberspace. I'm sympathetic to that idea, but I think there's a hole in this theory, given that to best knowledge, Sonic and Sage successfully destroy the End, and even Sage apparently survives the ordeal, so apparently death CAN be defeated? To be clear, I'd still call death a clear theme/motif of the game as a whole, but I don't think the End can really be said to be an embodiment.

-Tangentally, there's the idea that the End represents order/entropy, hence why it sought out the Ancients' homeworld because of the Chaos Emeralds (chaos/life/disorder), and pursued them all the way to Earth. Maybe, but unless I missed something, while the game makes it clear where the Chaos Emeralds originated, it doesn't explain if they're naturally occurring, or if the Ancients created them (I'm leaning more on the former, since the Master Emerald is clearly a natural gem based on what we see in the story).

-Concerning my thoughts on the game as a whole (briefiy), I think this is definitely a "good" game, I can't call it a "great" game, which probably makes me more reserved than most of the fanbase right now. The main core of the game is zooming around open areas, fighting enemies, getting goodies that aren't really needed, and having fun while doing that, especially as you learn how to take shortcuts/break intended sequences. If that isn't your cup of tea, I can't really recommend this to you, as the combat system is fun, but not that deep, and more than anything else, the Cyberspace stages need work. Their level design is okay, but Sonic controls terribly in them. Assuming Sonic Team sticks with this formula, more than anything, they need to do something better with the Cyberspace stages (or equivalent).

So, yeah. Good time. Rankings are below. I still want to listen to some of the ending songs to get the full weight, but haven't done that yet, hence why I haven't done that yet. But "Vandalize" is somewhere in the ending sequence, so that was neat.

RANKING

Spoiler

1: Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles

2: Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (16-bit)

3: Sonic Adventure 2

4: Sonic Adventure

5: Sonic Mania

6: Sonic Generations

7: Sonic Rush Adventure

8: Sonic Rush

9: Sonic Riders

10: Sonic the Hedgehog 4

11: Sonic the Hedgehog (16-bit)

12: Sonic Unleashed

13: Sonic Frontiers

14: Sonic Lost World

15: Sonic Spinball

16: Sonic Battle

17: Sonic Colours

18: Sonic Heroes

19: Sonic Advance

20: Sonic Advance 3

21: Sonic Advance 2

22: Sonic Pocket Adventure

23: Sonic Runners Adventure

24: Sonic 3D Blast

25: Sonic CD

26: Sonic Chronicles

27: Sonic Chaos

28: Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (8-bit)

29: Sonic the Hedgehog (8-bit)

30: Sonic Shuffle

31: Sonic Forces

32: Flicky

33: Sonic Jump

34: Sonic Pinball Party

35: Shadow the Hedgehog

36: Sonic Forces: Speed Battle

37: Sonic Dash

38: Sonic Dash 2: Sonic Boom

39: Sonic Drift

40: SegaSonic Cosmo Fighter

 

[Bedinsis]

It's just occurred to me that you are likely playing a re-release so this might have been fixed. That would also mean that you never got the moment where you need to turn the DS upside down, which is a shame.

Spoiler

In the original Japanese game Zero tells the players to "Seek a door with a q on it" They say this over the speaker with the rest of their instructions. This works because the Japanese word for 9 is pronounced "kyuu" but the door has the English letter q on it. Obviously this doesn't work in English as 9 and Q sound nothing alike so when they localized the game they gave all the players a note that explained that part of the instructions which Junpei reads out loud. That's all well and good, except for when you actually get to the q door they forgot to include the note and instead flash back to the loudspeaker and show Zero speaking the line, making the twist pretty confusing.

Santa and June were organizing the whole thing so it would have to have been one of them who put Snake in the coffin, I don't remember the specifics of who or when they did, though.

A lot of the conveniences in the plot can be explained away from the fact that June has future knowledge. Past Akane was the narrator on one of the screen the entire game (that's why you had to turn the DS upside down when it came time to enter the final puzzle solution) and witnessed the events of the entire game. I don't know how well that came across in the re-releases.

I thought the different timeline knowledge worked really well, and didn't feel like a cop-out at all, since it's central to the whole plot. Junpei needed to experience life threatening peril in order to form his connection to the morphogenetic fields and send his memories through it. All his deaths in the other endings were necessary to strengthen his connection enough that he could connect to past Akane and save her during the first nonary game. I thought it was a pretty clever twist on the VN branching path formula for the time. It worked much better here than in AI, where it didn't really serve any purpose whatsoever and was purely a vestigial plot element that only detracted from the rest of the narrative.

I did indeed play the version that is available on Steam. Having read up on the twist you refer to and having read your description, I think the solution they thought up is decent, but I ruined it for me because I just wanted to finish the game already.

Spoiler: The final puzzle in the Steam release

The final puzzle which you had to transfer to Akane in the past in the DS release was apparently a Sudoku. Not so in the PC release, where they had a different puzzle which I didn't bother solving since it was late at night, I just looked up the solution online. It involves replacing numbers on a grid with letters, spelling out the word PASSWORD. Afterwards it asks you to enter a password, which is "9", which causes the tiles spelling out PASSWORD to be replaced with the phrase 2+4+5+7+8, which clues the protagonist into adding up all the numbers of the participants in the room, which leads to an eureka moment and him realizing what to do.

With this in mind, what I would have done if I was in charge of localisation is to have the participants have the note on their person AND have Zero read those out loud... but for some unexplored reason have Zero not read out the part about the door being marked with a [9]. And in that final scene have the protagonist realize that "there must be some reason why Zero did not read that part out loud." and then having the eureka moment.

Anyway, I'm gonna start playing the sequel.

EDIT: I have started playing the sequel. The set-up feels a lot more modular from a game design perspective, i.e. it feels like it's gonna let me do a lot more choices and still allow it to affect the game, kind of like Suzerain. It's a shame that the main form of making choices is one I dislike. Also, the more free form camera in the puzzle room is making me motion sick.

The things I've done are light enough that I don't consider them spoilers but someone else might so scroll away if you want to discover for yourself.

There are once again Challenge Rooms where you must solve a series of Escape Room puzzles. What's new is that there is one choice made ahead of the rooms, and one choice made after them. Before the room you get to pick which of three rooms to enter and thereby which of the characters that will be with you, they are by necessity 3 per room. After the room is completed you enter a voting chamber with a Prisoner's Dilemma style voting system: Either you Ally yourself with the people the entered the room or you Betray them. Both voting Ally is best for the group as a whole but on an individual level voting Betray is your best option.

I'm not sure I like this. I want to be a good person, and I want people to be nice to me. Making this the central gimmick once again reminds me of Survivor style thinking, not recognizing each other's mutual humanity. It has also been said that one of the people present is the person arranging the whole affair, so we know for sure that one person *is* the bad guy.

I will also reveal the result of my first voting and my reasoning:

Spoiler: after the first vote

In the voting chamber I was told that voting Betray was the rational choice, something my player character also agreed on. I however did not. There are to be several more chambers; signalling right away that you're the sort of person that votes Betray will make people not go into chambers with you AND in the voting afterwards you can be sure the other party will vote Betray, which benefits no one.

This argument was however not presented; the other party voted Betray and my vote was presented as a piece of sentimentality on my end, not rational decision making.

 

[FakeSympathy]

So i decided to play Dark Souls Remastered for the nth time. I was worried that Elden Ring had spoiled me, with Dark Souls nowhere near giving me the sense of freedom.

But to my surprise, it turned out to be quite the banger still. I don’t think it’ll ever feel outdated. Sure, the inability to cancel some animation is annoying, but i began to see myself adjusting my playstyle accordingly. And I love the closely-knit experience.The way this game connects each area like spiderwebs is still amazing.

The hitbox and only being allowed to dodge roll four directions is still weird, though.

 

[Bartholen]

Cleared the Mages' Tower in Dragon Age. I can definitely see why the mod to skip the Fade section is one of the most popular on Nexus Mods. Like, it's not bad, smashing stuff as a golem is quite gratifying, and there's some fun to be had trying each of the forms out. But doing all of it again on repeat playthroughs knowing it's going to be exactly the same each time definitely makes me think I don't need to play through this section again. It's quite long, visually repetitive, the combat's not as interesting since you're going solo (even with the different forms) and there's a lot of backtracking. It wasn't as bad as I was expecting (I was expecting a total shitfest based on the things I've heard over the years), but overall just very meh.

 

[Bartholen]

So i decided to play Dark Souls Remastered for the nth time. I was worried that Elden Ring had spoiled me, with Dark Souls nowhere near giving me the sense of freedom.

But to my surprise, it turned out to be quite the banger still. I don’t think it’ll ever feel outdated. Sure, the inability to cancel some animation is annoying, but i began to see myself adjusting my playstyle accordingly. And I love the closely-knit experience.The way this game connects each area like spiderwebs is still amazing.

The hitbox and only being allowed to dodge roll four directions is still weird, though.

If you haven't before, I defiinitely recommend a soul level 1 playthrough of DS1. Of the trilogy it's the only one that IMO properly supports a SL1 playthrough. DS2 has the adaptability issue and hollowing, and DS3's enemy damage gets ridiculous towards the endgame. But DS1 has both the single-speed dodge roll and very importantly armor upgrading, so your defensive capabilities actually somewhat keep up with the enemies. Not worrying about leveling creates a whole new dynamic where upgrade materials are suddenly much more important, and weapon types you wouldn't normally use (like Lightning and Fire) actually become very powerful since your stats don't increase, and therefore weapon damage doesn't scale. I made it all the way to Gwyn on my SL1, which is unfortunately just a parry-or-die instantly fight, but the journey there was wholly enjoyable.

 

[Dalisclock]

Cleared the Mages' Tower in Dragon Age. I can definitely see why the mod to skip the Fade section is one of the most popular on Nexus Mods. Like, it's not bad, smashing stuff as a golem is quite gratifying, and there's some fun to be had trying each of the forms out. But doing all of it again on repeat playthroughs knowing it's going to be exactly the same each time definitely makes me think I don't need to play through this section again. It's quite long, visually repetitive, the combat's not as interesting since you're going solo (even with the different forms) and there's a lot of backtracking. It wasn't as bad as I was expecting (I was expecting a total shitfest based on the things I've heard over the years), but overall just very meh.

I did the fade because I was trying to do a full, "accurate'" playthrough, at least as far as content goes(I'm not passing up the DLC gear that makes the game easier) but I'm pretty sure whenever i redo DAO I'll use that mod...and probably some other QOL mods as well. I was glad when the later game toned down the fade to be shorter and more focused.

Same with the deep roads.

 

[Drathnoxis]

Anyway, I'm gonna start playing the sequel.

EDIT: I have started playing the sequel. The set-up feels a lot more modular from a game design perspective, i.e. it feels like it's gonna let me do a lot more choices and still allow it to affect the game, kind of like Suzerain. It's a shame that the main form of making choices is one I dislike. Also, the more free form camera in the puzzle room is making me motion sick.

The things I've done are light enough that I don't consider them spoilers but someone else might so scroll away if you want to discover for yourself.

There are once again Challenge Rooms where you must solve a series of Escape Room puzzles. What's new is that there is one choice made ahead of the rooms, and one choice made after them. Before the room you get to pick which of three rooms to enter and thereby which of the characters that will be with you, they are by necessity 3 per room. After the room is completed you enter a voting chamber with a Prisoner's Dilemma style voting system: Either you Ally yourself with the people the entered the room or you Betray them. Both voting Ally is best for the group as a whole but on an individual level voting Betray is your best option.

I'm not sure I like this. I want to be a good person, and I want people to be nice to me. Making this the central gimmick once again reminds me of Survivor style thinking, not recognizing each other's mutual humanity. It has also been said that one of the people present is the person arranging the whole affair, so we know for sure that one person *is* the bad guy.

I will also reveal the result of my first voting and my reasoning:

Spoiler: after the first vote

In the voting chamber I was told that voting Betray was the rational choice, something my player character also agreed on. I however did not. There are to be several more chambers; signalling right away that you're the sort of person that votes Betray will make people not go into chambers with you AND in the voting afterwards you can be sure the other party will vote Betray, which benefits no one.

This argument was however not presented; the other party voted Betray and my vote was presented as a piece of sentimentality on my end, not rational decision making.

I agree. The prisoner's dilemma votes always bothered me. There is no point to picking betray because you need to make it through multiple rounds and you can only do that once before the game deadlocks, and if everybody allies then everyone gets out. The only reason to betray is to purposefully screw someone over for the sake of it.

Out of curiosity, who were you up against in first round vote?

 

[Dalisclock]

Finished Pentiment.

Really, Really enjoyed it and it might be one of my favorite games in the past year as of right now. I think part of it is because I'm a history nerd because the main theme of the game is the fact that while history is arguably objective, interpretation of history is very subjective and the truth gets lost in time. Notably, in the last act, you are painting a mural for the Rathaus(Town Hall) depicting the history of the town and invariably you'll come across a couple different interpretations of events for a given period and inevitably you need to decide which take on events you want to depict. Even the big event that occured within living memory by people you get to talk to has numerous takes on what really happened and what it meant, an event that happened less than 20 years prior. And I love the fact that the attention is shown on this, that the actual truth of our past may be lost and all we really have are impressions based on the limited information that survived. The town of Tasing has a ton of history buried under it that is never really gone but it's meaning is lost while acting a microcosm for important historical events of the late middle ages/early renaissance). Even when you finish the mural it's clear only some truths could be depicted and everything else goes left unsaid.

Notably, a major plot point in the story revolves around the two local saints(Mortiz and Satine) of which statues from long ago sit near the town. In reality they're statues of the Roman Gods Mars and Diana from the Roman occupation of the area over 1000 years ago and when the romans left other people came in and assumed the statues were saints. I kinda clued into part of this pretty fast but didn't realize the full implications until the end when it's explained to the main character. The local priest realized this when the head of one of the statues was dug up and says "Mars" on it and realized that the townspeople finding out their saints were basically pagan deities would break the faith of the townspeople. You're given the choice to tell the town or not at the end.

I also really enjoyed the fact that that writing makes the people feel like actual people who live in this town and a lot of the conversations are there to flesh our their characters and the town history rather then serve the plot directly. Even near the end of the game everyone in the town gathers in the local inn for christmas has a sense of community for these people who have to depend on each other and know each other very well. It feels very much like a slice of life for a community that never existed but could represent any village in the care to it. Hell, sharing meals with people throughout the game is just another way to get to know them and learn about their lives.

It's hard to really articulate why I found this so compelling honestly. People have compared it Disco Elysium but the only way that comparison really stands is the quality of the writing and sense of place. Sure, there's a murder mystery in both games but they aren't particularly similar in that regard(and many games have murder mysteries). I guess the fact is that the game never tells you if you're right or wrong to make the choices you have but forces you to make a choice regardless. During the various murders, it's never made clear if you fingered the right person or not(though arguably everyone you can finger is guilty of something). In particular, in the 2nd murder case you can find plenty of evidence one of the suspects is embezzling a lot of money from the abbey but there's no evidence he actually committed murder. By the time I had to make a choice, it was either pick him or the woman who was cheating on her husband but there was also no evidence she committed murder. I picked the embezzler and hoped I was correct

So basically, if history is your jam or the idea of watching a community grow and change over 25 years with writing to make it compelling, check this out.

 

[BrawlMan]

I beat Evil West on Hard Mode, but didn't get the achievement. I don't know if it has to be beaten on a fresh save, but I beat it on NG+. I am not doing that again, so screw it. I'll play Rondo of Blood next before Moonrider comes out.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

It's hard to really articulate why I found this so compelling honestly.

Because you're a great big history nerd.

 

[Dalisclock]

Because you're a great big history nerd.

Checks out

 

[Bedinsis]

Played some more of the second Zero Escape game, Virtue's Last Reward.

I played on one route, glancing down on the in-game flowchart ahead and realized I'd get to make another choice before the game suddenly went *BLEEP! You have not experienced enough plot on the other routes yet to continue down this route! Please go back and make a different choice.*. I.e. the story line interrupted itself at a critical point to act as a teaser. I don't think I like this. AI - The Somnium Files also did this and it felt both like my choices were rendered irrelevant and it felt like someone snatched the book out of my hands just as it was getting interesting.

Anyway: I earlier called the game more modular, by which I assumed that they'd throw in a line or two that acknowledged my earlier choices and how it related to my overall survival chances but on the whole would be similar. Having now played a bit down another route I can tell that is not the case; an entirely different event occurred this time, and since the only thing different is that I made a different choice that should not affect that I assume the idea is that I should figure out who the bad guy is from analyzing the votes and thinking why they would let this different event happen. I am currently rather lost though.

I will post what has happened so far and who I think the bad guy is from the in-game events.

Spoiler: speculation about the plot

So the first route I went down was to enter the room with Alice and then voting Ally. Alice voted Betray, and my immediate thought was to make sure she ended up in a group with the other people that voted Betray, so that those uncooperative [expletives] would get a taste of their own medicine, alternatively make sure I ended up in a group with people that had been voting Ally. In my case that meant either getting in the same group as Luna or the old man Tenmyoty. Then I found out that the colors and groups are immediately shuffled after a completed room and my plans were for nought. Instead I was now in the same team as Luna and my previous partner Phi ended up being our partner.

What gets me the most is that before we were to pick a room/partner the second time it was suggested that those with the least amount of BP left (the points you gain or lose depending on how the Prisoner's Dilemma vote goes) should decide what the set-up would be, to which Alice, the traitorous sum-of-a-witch protested and instead suggested democracy. I wanted to protest and say that "You have just proven yourself totally unreliable in this scenario and now you are trying to argue that we should let you have a say in this? Forget it.". What's more, since we know one of us is the bad guy the we want to encourage cooperation since the bad guy presumably is self-serving, so giving more say to people that have proven themselves trustworthy would hurt the bad guy.

Anyway: storywise the kid Quark got ill immediately after the second chamber with a deadly disease called Radical-6 and then Alice also fell ill. One dose of medicine was found and I was left on a cliff hanger on who should get it (the child or the traitorous sum-of-a-witch?).

After that I went back to the beginning but chose to partner with Luna, who seems like a genuinely nice person and voted Ally in her vote in the other timeline. Which she also did in this route, thankfully, but I find it more interesting that Alice voted Ally this time while her partners voted Betray.

There was also a dead woman in the voting chambers that the old man Tenmyoty reacted to and which people concluded was probably murdered by Zero, the person arranging this game and the bad guy. I suspect the woman was his wife. And that Quark is his grandchild.

Apart from that I am lost on what is going on. I don't think the old man Tenmyoty is the bad guy though.

I suspect Phi is going through the game again and again since some comment she made alludes to this and we found a book on Schrödinger's cat. I also think the player character has gone through it again and again since exploding moon base dreams could be the bomb that was found in the Alice route.

I also have been slightly spoiled about the plot which I'll speculate a bit more on in an extra spoiler.

What I heard is that there is some plot twist that the fan base collectively thought was bullshit. Currently I am speculating that it is something to do with the player character, since in the group shots we never get to see his face. Maybe his appearance from the flashbacks do not match his current appearance and that is significant in some way? I.e. that he only has that person's memories but is another person.

[snip]

I've written about it in the spoiler above. I have however one more thing to say about your post that goes into the spoiler below.

Spoiler: regarding Drathnoxis' post

As you saw above, I've gone down two routes though not completed any. Since one voted Betray and one voted Ally and you had to ask who I teamed up with I conclude that the third partner is going to vote Betray once I go down that route. So you posted an indirect spoiler. I assume that was not your intention, and since I can imagine scenarios in which it was in fact not a spoiler(maybe you missed that I wrote that my partner in the first round voted Betray?) I am going to follow my heart going forwards, but please, try to be cautious.

Also, please don't respond to this spoiler in particular, since that could potentially confirm or deny my conclusions.