Hyper Light Drifter is pretty great. Its combat system is top class, the artwork is beautiful, and the story is pretty well-told and mostly unobtrusive if you don't care about it that much. I never beat it myself, but I've been meaning to since forever. Still working on Dark Souls 2, though, so you'll just have to tell me how it goes.
Yeah, that's still in my backlog as In Progress. Finished the North and East areas, got all the way to the boss on the West area(stupid cat boss) before getting stuck on him. I tried once to go find more gearbits to level my gear up more and I haven't played it since.
"The longer the Icon of Sin remains on Earth, the stronger it will become."
You're right, you're not a pursuer of gamer social channels, because there's plenty of discussion regarding Soulsbourne stories and lore (mainly lore) on other websites, especially reddit, /v/, and Youtube, among others. many people, myself included, play these games for both their gameplay and world.
Like others have said, buff your adaptability up to 20-25 (it'll make your dodge and estus drinking better), and start getting used to dodging attacks, rather than relying on your shield. There are plenty of later bosses (especially in the DLC) who will just eat right through your shield, unless you have tons of stamina and a shield with heaps of stability. I've done two no-shield runs in DS2 and I found it a much more effective and fun method of playing. It also allows you to play around with the power stancing mechanic, which is only featured in DS2. Keeping your equip load under 70% also helps.
I haven't play that or shadow tactics but I'm kind of in the mood to play it or a game like it.
Honestly, Yahtzee's review of the game is pretty bad. Starting from the fact that he failed to do more research than Dan Brown, seeing as the Steam page says the game is a prequel, the game gives you plenty of warning, from enemy vision (if you have object permanence, you can figure out the patrol routes and where the vision cones will be when you can't see them), how much sound your actions make, and where the alert zones are. That's another thing he got wrong: alerts only affect certain areas, not 'every enemy on the map'. From what I heard, his stream showed him playing pretty badly as well, not even zooming out to see more guards at once.
There is quite a bit of quick loading, but it's kinda part of the stealth genre in a sense and half the reason any player reloads is because you want your character to be that "ghost" you imagine them to be. And, pretty much every single cockup is your fault in the game. The game tells you exactly what enemies can see, exactly how loud anything you do will be. If you focus and take your time, you can go long periods without needing to quick load, though still be quick saving
. I think I just played at least an hour straight not needing to quick load. Alerts aren't THAT bad in the game and you can survive them, but like any stealth game, it is quicker to reload. The caution/alert phases in the game are actually rather short compared to say the MGS games. There is a much higher amount of enemies than most stealth games because you are playing with multiple characters and you can do far more damage with them than what a Solid Snake or Sam Fisher ever could. You do have to think differently and makes more elaborate plans for what is open to you when you use everything at your disposal.....
I already have Shadow Tactics(from another sale), but I haven't had a chance to play it yet. I think I will try it out soon. Desperados looks a lot of fun though.
THIS, is why I lost trust when it came to Yahtzee's review. His lack of paying attention to obvious details or tutorials. It's not levels of Egoraptor/Game Grumps bad, but it's no less annoying. His review of Mad World being the start of it.
I take his reviews with a grain of salt, really. I know he loved Painkiller but I couldn't really see it(and I bought it because he liked it so much). OTOH, I really liked Serious Sam(and the original Doom games) so it should have been up my alley.
I'm of similar mind, but for the most part I've gotten to that point where I know a game of work out for me or not. And I didn't always take Yahtzees reviews as 100% factor prove either, but his Mad world review was a tipping and starting point of "Okay, you clearly don't know what you're talkin about.". Or insulting certain fandoms for no reason.
I watch it for the entertainment value/bile and almost nothing else. His views on a game have virtually no influence on mine it doesn't actually matter, not least because it's clear his taste in games is wildly different from mine (also, he generally seems to have trouble with strategy-type games to begin with).
The game is good and is probably the closest tactics to reach the god tier level of FFT. But sadly the story is just bad, it has a bunch of "twist" that you can see coming from a million miles away, none of the character have any kind of arc and they're pretty flat as character goes.
