How do you do that?
At this point, probably close to half my playtime is chalice dungeons. I need to see this through.
What are you currently playing?
- Thread starter Nick Calandra
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Hopefully you didn’t miss one! I did NG and had to do another run.
I meant the save scum. I already saw that thing about the umbilical cord which is the only reason I'm thinking about doing a NG+ run.
When you’re told to go meet Gehrman behind the Hunter’s Dream, make a USB save before opening the gate. Then just reload it from the PS dashboard’s saved data menu after each ending trophy pops.
Tried sea of thieves with a few friend and I'm pretty shocked that this game is so expensive. It feel like a 10$, made by a 3 person team type of game. The game has essentially nothing in it, there's no story, or progression or much to explore really. Everywhere we saw was more or less the same, all quest are extremely simple and there's nothing really to discover. You go to an island, dig some gold. Weeee gold right? Well gold is useless, there's only cosmetic to buy. You can't change ship (there's only 3 playable ship and the game pick which one you can use based on team size), you can't modify said ship and there's no gear to obtain. Now it's fine that there's no progression if the experience itself was fun, but there's also no real progression in quests, its all very basic stuff that get stale after doing 2-3 quests. It was really fun at first cause you just goof around with friends, but got stale almost right away and I can't imagine myself doing this for more than a few hours, which is why the price point feel insane. iirc it was release at the same time as gamepass, so I'm guessing its priced the point it is to justify the gamepass.
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Still AC:Odyssey and I love it. I was wrong assuming they only featured bleached white marble statues - they also feature historically accurate painted statues and they look cooler than expected.
It has flaws.
1) The Athenian/Spartan conflict is pointless, the sides are treated as equivalent, you play a "mercenary" working for both, regions flip flop between spartan and athenian control and you can participate in conquest battles to make one side or the other gain/keep control of a region - it has no impact, no meaning, no purpose, no consequences. It's like a half-baked turf war (à la gta, far cry, just cause) with no effect, no siding, no reason to get involved. Feels empty, like a demo of sorts. A cogwheel spinning in the void.
2) Such historical games love to throw historical characters at you, and as they do, they're forced to have a take on them, give them a face, a voice, a personality, behaviour, intents, etc. I don't like that, in games or in fictions or in documentaries with "reconstitutions". Their take on Robespierre had been strongly criticized, because there are some political stakes around the popular myths and narratives concerning the french Revolution. But on a more innocuous level, it's what prevents me so far to play Black Flag - I don't want to meet the ubisoft version of famous pirates that I studied. And, well, same goes with antique philosophy. Ubisoft's Democritus is an annoying twat, which bothers me because he's one of the absolute unbelievably coolest greek philosophers. But as I said, I'm condemned to be irked by such things if I accept games or fictions that have to subjectively re-create historical figures...
3) It's framed as an Assassin's Creed game. So, mythology is replaced by moronic ufo scifi stuff. What a waste. But at least this game is surprisingly unobtrusive (even a bit shy) with its animus idiocy, especially in comparison with AC1 and AC2. I appreciate that. Crossing fingers for it to stay that way.
I'm also amused by its occasionally creepy discourses on slavery. You meet one slave who asks you to lie in order to prevent his release, and another who proclaims at lengths his happiness to be a slave, and okay, I get it, it's interesting to de-center our views of slavery in a different historical/cultural context, but through such videogamey videogame dialogues it may be a tad clumsy. At least it raises some points without forcing the player to agree (your character can answer against it). But what amuses me is how these themes were used as super dramatic outrage fuel in the fantasy context of a harry potter game (because we-don't-like-rowling) and entirely ignored in the historical context of an assassin's creed game. This outrage selectiveness is so... "conservative", in my eyes, I'm somewhere between the bitterness of shame towards what is supposed to be "my" ideological side, and the hilarity of this ridiculously transparent example of bad faith. It would just be more comfy if it was a conservative example.
It has flaws.
1) The Athenian/Spartan conflict is pointless, the sides are treated as equivalent, you play a "mercenary" working for both, regions flip flop between spartan and athenian control and you can participate in conquest battles to make one side or the other gain/keep control of a region - it has no impact, no meaning, no purpose, no consequences. It's like a half-baked turf war (à la gta, far cry, just cause) with no effect, no siding, no reason to get involved. Feels empty, like a demo of sorts. A cogwheel spinning in the void.
2) Such historical games love to throw historical characters at you, and as they do, they're forced to have a take on them, give them a face, a voice, a personality, behaviour, intents, etc. I don't like that, in games or in fictions or in documentaries with "reconstitutions". Their take on Robespierre had been strongly criticized, because there are some political stakes around the popular myths and narratives concerning the french Revolution. But on a more innocuous level, it's what prevents me so far to play Black Flag - I don't want to meet the ubisoft version of famous pirates that I studied. And, well, same goes with antique philosophy. Ubisoft's Democritus is an annoying twat, which bothers me because he's one of the absolute unbelievably coolest greek philosophers. But as I said, I'm condemned to be irked by such things if I accept games or fictions that have to subjectively re-create historical figures...
3) It's framed as an Assassin's Creed game. So, mythology is replaced by moronic ufo scifi stuff. What a waste. But at least this game is surprisingly unobtrusive (even a bit shy) with its animus idiocy, especially in comparison with AC1 and AC2. I appreciate that. Crossing fingers for it to stay that way.
I'm also amused by its occasionally creepy discourses on slavery. You meet one slave who asks you to lie in order to prevent his release, and another who proclaims at lengths his happiness to be a slave, and okay, I get it, it's interesting to de-center our views of slavery in a different historical/cultural context, but through such videogamey videogame dialogues it may be a tad clumsy. At least it raises some points without forcing the player to agree (your character can answer against it). But what amuses me is how these themes were used as super dramatic outrage fuel in the fantasy context of a harry potter game (because we-don't-like-rowling) and entirely ignored in the historical context of an assassin's creed game. This outrage selectiveness is so... "conservative", in my eyes, I'm somewhere between the bitterness of shame towards what is supposed to be "my" ideological side, and the hilarity of this ridiculously transparent example of bad faith. It would just be more comfy if it was a conservative example.
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The dialogue scenes in Odyssey are just all so painful to me, with those accents and those stilted angles and pacing, I can't pay attention to anything they're saying or what's going on. I have played the game thoroughly with DLC's because it's so pretty to look at but my brain completely shuts off whenever they're talking.
That party in Athens was one of the most torturous video game experiences I ever had.
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The accent is precious to me. Usually, I'm not too fond of german or russian accents meaning look-they-speak-in-foreign-tongues in war or cold war movies, I prefer either standard english or (even better) local language with subtitles. Although I loved the 2009 movie Strigoi, for instance, I found its approach (all actors speaking english with romanian accents) distracting. But in that game, which doesn't offer the option of either ancient or modern greek, I find the pure english lines more distracting than the accents. More "culturally appropriating", in a way. And more importantly : the accents mean that at least, at last, the nouns are pronounced correctly, and this alone is awesome. This is a delight and a relief in itself. I would have flipped the table at the third "Peerayklays" or "Aythens".
So that's quite a win, for me. And I'm absolutely indifferent to how many other players it tortures.
So has the ancient anime "sub vs. dub" debate finally come to video games?The accent is precious to me. Usually, I'm not too fond of german or russian accents meaning look-they-speak-in-foreign-tongues in war or cold war movies, I prefer either standard english or (even better) local language with subtitles. Although I loved the 2009 movie Strigoi, for instance, I found its approach (all actors speaking english with romanian accents) distracting. But in that game, which doesn't offer the option of either ancient or modern greek, I find the pure english lines more distracting than the accents. More "culturally appropriating", in a way. And more importantly : the accents mean that at least, at last, the nouns are pronounced correctly, and this alone is awesome. This is a delight and a relief in itself. I would have flipped the table at the third "Peerayklays" or "Aythens".
So that's quite a win, for me. And I'm absolutely indifferent to how many other players it tortures.
I remember people arguing about the accents of Altair and Ezio in the early AC games, so yeah, and I personally would have liked to have been able to turn off the voice track for Final Fantasy X so I wouldn't have to listen to Tidus talk for half the game.
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Absent
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Got Supplice and beat it on hard mode. Initially I was kinda wary of it, its a gzdoom engine based game with huge detailed levels. Big levels can be good (Hedon) or bad (Wrath of ruin/Hand of the necromancer, although hand also has issues with really annoying enemies and weird weapons that only kinda work)
It took a level but I really got into it, the weapons feel good, the game looks great if you are into good pixel art, the music is fantastic and even the story is interesting. Its told from consoles you find, both ones you need to progress and optional ones you can stumble on. Its a complex tale of Corporation vs union, ai vs... sensibility and an alien invasion and it makes it all work. So far only the first of 6 planned episodes is out and its like $15. It only took me about 6 hours and that was with hunting for secrets, but I am excited for more to come.
It took a level but I really got into it, the weapons feel good, the game looks great if you are into good pixel art, the music is fantastic and even the story is interesting. Its told from consoles you find, both ones you need to progress and optional ones you can stumble on. Its a complex tale of Corporation vs union, ai vs... sensibility and an alien invasion and it makes it all work. So far only the first of 6 planned episodes is out and its like $15. It only took me about 6 hours and that was with hunting for secrets, but I am excited for more to come.
Hot take: All of Square Enix's games since about Final Fantasy 15 have sounded better in English than Japanese.I cannot even fathom how this is a debate.
Been trying a new roguelite called Flame Keeper lately, but it's as average as they come unfortunately...
At this point, rouge-lites have beyond overstayed their welcome. Definitely not my thing, and will continue to steer clear of them.
WORLD OF WARCRAFT
So I'm nearing the end of my subscription (about 2 weeks left) - I never thought I'd say this when I started playing, but I'm going to miss it.
Or at least some of it. Even now, the formula of an MMO isn't really my thing (go from X to Y, go to Z, kill A monsters, return to Y, get reward, go to B and do another thing that may lead you onto quest C, or not, and so on), and really, it's the emergent stuff that makes it worthwhile - running around, meeting players, teaming up with those other players to do whatever, so on and so forth. It also helps that because I can now focus on one single character, my human warrior's up to level 30, which means that I'm no longer at the lower end of the pecking order. And it didn't require killing boars while listening to 'Live to Win' to reach that number.
So, yeah. Don't have much to say that I haven't already. Despite my more positive thoughts, my ranking of this hasn't shifted in any list I've applied it to. Maybe a MMO list, but since I've played maybe 3 MMOs ever, that isn't saying much.
FIRE EMBLEM HEROES
Without a doubt, Heroes is still the weakest Fire Emblem game I've ever played. However, having reached Book III, my judgement of it has become much more positive. This shouldn't come as a shock to anyone as I mentioned similar positive thoughts on Book II, but the writing of Book III is still on par with that of Book II, so good job there.
I notice that Heroes is still plumbing Norse mythology - Book I was Askr vs. Embla, Book II was Nifelheim vs. Muspelheim, Book III is Hel invading Askr, which makes me wonder what happens when the developers run out of Norse realms to steal, sorry, "inspire" them. Snark aside, the writing's better here in that there's at least a sense of stakes, though come to think of it, Book II was probably better overall. Book II has a clear threat (Muspel) that destroyed Nifelheim, that now seeks to destroy Askr, so cue McGuffin hunt to find the means to defeat the baddie. Simple, but effective. Book III, on the other hand, has Hel invadng Askr because...reasons. Yes, I'm sure those reasons will be revealed, and there's been some good stuff (e.g. Alphonse's relationship with his father, and his father giving his life to save him in the end), but nothing spectacular. It's more that when your overall story starts out crap (Book I), and remains crap (Book I), and when your story stops being crap (Book II), things can seem a lot better.
Also, I'll give some credit to Eir's unit design, since I haven't seen a unit like her in an FE game before. Basically, she hits the enemy hard, but every time she attacks the enemy, she loses some HP at the end of the round. So either you use a healer, or you use her sparingly, or you go all out. It would be interesting to see this mechanic in a more fleshed-out FE game, but for now, I'll give credit where it's due.
So I'm nearing the end of my subscription (about 2 weeks left) - I never thought I'd say this when I started playing, but I'm going to miss it.
Or at least some of it. Even now, the formula of an MMO isn't really my thing (go from X to Y, go to Z, kill A monsters, return to Y, get reward, go to B and do another thing that may lead you onto quest C, or not, and so on), and really, it's the emergent stuff that makes it worthwhile - running around, meeting players, teaming up with those other players to do whatever, so on and so forth. It also helps that because I can now focus on one single character, my human warrior's up to level 30, which means that I'm no longer at the lower end of the pecking order. And it didn't require killing boars while listening to 'Live to Win' to reach that number.
So, yeah. Don't have much to say that I haven't already. Despite my more positive thoughts, my ranking of this hasn't shifted in any list I've applied it to. Maybe a MMO list, but since I've played maybe 3 MMOs ever, that isn't saying much.
FIRE EMBLEM HEROES
Without a doubt, Heroes is still the weakest Fire Emblem game I've ever played. However, having reached Book III, my judgement of it has become much more positive. This shouldn't come as a shock to anyone as I mentioned similar positive thoughts on Book II, but the writing of Book III is still on par with that of Book II, so good job there.
I notice that Heroes is still plumbing Norse mythology - Book I was Askr vs. Embla, Book II was Nifelheim vs. Muspelheim, Book III is Hel invading Askr, which makes me wonder what happens when the developers run out of Norse realms to steal, sorry, "inspire" them. Snark aside, the writing's better here in that there's at least a sense of stakes, though come to think of it, Book II was probably better overall. Book II has a clear threat (Muspel) that destroyed Nifelheim, that now seeks to destroy Askr, so cue McGuffin hunt to find the means to defeat the baddie. Simple, but effective. Book III, on the other hand, has Hel invadng Askr because...reasons. Yes, I'm sure those reasons will be revealed, and there's been some good stuff (e.g. Alphonse's relationship with his father, and his father giving his life to save him in the end), but nothing spectacular. It's more that when your overall story starts out crap (Book I), and remains crap (Book I), and when your story stops being crap (Book II), things can seem a lot better.
Also, I'll give some credit to Eir's unit design, since I haven't seen a unit like her in an FE game before. Basically, she hits the enemy hard, but every time she attacks the enemy, she loses some HP at the end of the round. So either you use a healer, or you use her sparingly, or you go all out. It would be interesting to see this mechanic in a more fleshed-out FE game, but for now, I'll give credit where it's due.
I finished Dredge.
Overall it's pretty good- indeed, a fun little indy fishing game with some story about sea monsters.
I kinda regret paying full price for this new game simply because I promised myself I'd stop doing that but.. *shrugs* I kinda didn't have anything else I really wanted to play.
I also quit trying to do all the side stuff- I did most of it but at one point I simply couldn't find some object in the most difficulty part of the map where a giant orange fish attacks you while trying to navigate around ruins and I gave up on that. But I did all the other side stuff I found and resorted to looking up a few fish locations towards the end online.
It's a good podcast game- the soundtrack is great but becomes unnecessary when you're just popping about the map.
And I dunno what to play next. I kinda wanna try Re4make but I never liked a RE game and I'm not gonna pay full price, hopefully one day it comes to GamePass.
I guess if I'm hungry for a real game come Jedi Survivor I might buckle....
Overall it's pretty good- indeed, a fun little indy fishing game with some story about sea monsters.
I kinda regret paying full price for this new game simply because I promised myself I'd stop doing that but.. *shrugs* I kinda didn't have anything else I really wanted to play.
I also quit trying to do all the side stuff- I did most of it but at one point I simply couldn't find some object in the most difficulty part of the map where a giant orange fish attacks you while trying to navigate around ruins and I gave up on that. But I did all the other side stuff I found and resorted to looking up a few fish locations towards the end online.
It's a good podcast game- the soundtrack is great but becomes unnecessary when you're just popping about the map.
And I dunno what to play next. I kinda wanna try Re4make but I never liked a RE game and I'm not gonna pay full price, hopefully one day it comes to GamePass.
I guess if I'm hungry for a real game come Jedi Survivor I might buckle....
Finally completed Resi Evil 4 remake, wow that took way longer than expected.
My only memory of finishing the original was many many years ago when I was stuck in mental hospital ward for like a few weeks to a month and they had a videogames room with a Wii, Xbox and big HD telly (socialised healthcare is a great thing, plz don't let the self-serving capitalists convince you otherwise), so found the Wii copy of resi evil 4 and bashed through it in a few days in-between the zopiclone-mandated sleep (ah sweet zopiclone, if only you didn't build tolerance so easily, we could've still been friends). For all that time my vague memory of the game was just: Village - Washed-out brown Boat scene - Washed-out grey castle with tiny French aristocrat - Wobbly grey poopy Bois - Washed-out brown and grey military island with annoying QTE knife fight - Jetski Sunset. All wrapped in this unexciting colour palette of washed-out browns and greys that belied the actual fun had in the moment-to-moment shooty survivals. Did try playing it again last year but got a tad annoyed with the cumbersome turning controls and decided to just await the remake instead.
Anyway, the main point am trying to allure is this remake felt pretty much like a whole new game to me, I can't tell which parts are fresh or not, and certainly don't remember most of the shit after the village at all. Lots a fun shooting knee caps, and still get a gleeful high whenever a back suplex is set up and pulled off (you gotta shoot 'em in the knees to get 'em stunned then melee button prompt them from behind, for those like me who didn't know these arcane knowledges before). Still haven't managed to afford a gun upgrade ticket though. And even though am sure I don't got the OCD, fiddling around with the attach case menu definitely makes me feel like I got it during those moments. Good game overall, much fun, looks way less of an amorphous haze of washed-out browns and greys than the original too!
My only memory of finishing the original was many many years ago when I was stuck in mental hospital ward for like a few weeks to a month and they had a videogames room with a Wii, Xbox and big HD telly (socialised healthcare is a great thing, plz don't let the self-serving capitalists convince you otherwise), so found the Wii copy of resi evil 4 and bashed through it in a few days in-between the zopiclone-mandated sleep (
Anyway, the main point am trying to allure is this remake felt pretty much like a whole new game to me, I can't tell which parts are fresh or not, and certainly don't remember most of the shit after the village at all. Lots a fun shooting knee caps, and still get a gleeful high whenever a back suplex is set up and pulled off (you gotta shoot 'em in the knees to get 'em stunned then melee button prompt them from behind, for those like me who didn't know these arcane knowledges before). Still haven't managed to afford a gun upgrade ticket though. And even though am sure I don't got the OCD, fiddling around with the attach case menu definitely makes me feel like I got it during those moments. Good game overall, much fun, looks way less of an amorphous haze of washed-out browns and greys than the original too!
Absent
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So, Dredge is the casual version of Sunless Sea ?
Went and 100%-ed Sekiro anyway. Some bosses broke up the monotony of the grind and gave a few nice boosts in collecting the xp. Took a few hours of grinding while listening to streams, but now I have the fancy 100% completion marker on the Steam profile.
In addition to that, I finally snagged another game completion that was almost 20 years in the making: I cleared the final mission of Stronghold Crusader, which was a lot easier than I expected. See, the AI in that game is rather retarded. In the final mission you're stranded on one corner of the map against 7 allied AI lords, and your area has 3 distinct points of entry for enemy forces. They are easily plugged up, and here comes the messing with the AI part: it knows how to bring down towers, walls and ordinary buildings, but a few special structures, among which are wells, are a total blindspot for it. The AI simply doesn't know what to do with them. So by strategically placing a few wells (super cheap, 50 gold apiece) you can create an impenetrable barrier, since the AI won't even try to destroy them because the pathfinding always prioritizes open routes, and fortification structures after that. That way you can funnel enemy forces super easily into kill zones. After the initial defenses were complete, it was just a matter of turtling for a few hours, after which I promptly wiped the floor with the enemies. Another way in which the final mission is more lenient than it initially seems is that there are simply too few resources on the map for all the AI bots to be effective all the time. So a couple of them you can easily force into a dead end and effectively eliminate as any sort of threat.
Got a super early 00s european strategy game congratulation screen as a reward, which had its distinct charm that's definitely gone the way of the dodo.
In addition to that, I finally snagged another game completion that was almost 20 years in the making: I cleared the final mission of Stronghold Crusader, which was a lot easier than I expected. See, the AI in that game is rather retarded. In the final mission you're stranded on one corner of the map against 7 allied AI lords, and your area has 3 distinct points of entry for enemy forces. They are easily plugged up, and here comes the messing with the AI part: it knows how to bring down towers, walls and ordinary buildings, but a few special structures, among which are wells, are a total blindspot for it. The AI simply doesn't know what to do with them. So by strategically placing a few wells (super cheap, 50 gold apiece) you can create an impenetrable barrier, since the AI won't even try to destroy them because the pathfinding always prioritizes open routes, and fortification structures after that. That way you can funnel enemy forces super easily into kill zones. After the initial defenses were complete, it was just a matter of turtling for a few hours, after which I promptly wiped the floor with the enemies. Another way in which the final mission is more lenient than it initially seems is that there are simply too few resources on the map for all the AI bots to be effective all the time. So a couple of them you can easily force into a dead end and effectively eliminate as any sort of threat.
Got a super early 00s european strategy game congratulation screen as a reward, which had its distinct charm that's definitely gone the way of the dodo.