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- Thread starter Nick Calandra
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I guess I should ask if there's an optimal length of time to let an enemy city starve and weaken before assaulting the walls. I noticed the garrison gets weaker the longer I sieged bit it also take a number of turns to do that and I still assualted it in the end.
Appreciated. I know the upkeep costs are going to be an issue as I put more and bigger armies in the field and I'm still feeling my way around this stuff right now. Being away from the series for 15 years means I have to learn all this stuff the hard way.
Early game you're generally better off grinding your army to a bloody pulp on the wall of the city than waiting, recruiting is fast and the cost of recruiting is only equivalent to a few turn of upkeep, you get a big sack of resource for grabbing a city too so you can quickly build your army back up.
If you absolutly have to siege to take a city, then you probably should be sending your army somewhere else. Sieging is more for when you have a few armies around and can afford to leave one to do nothing for a few turns.
Be careful of upgrading/tiering up your units too fast, iirc Troy doesn't punish you for having multiple army in the field so you're better off with two weak armies than one strong one.
If you absolutly have to siege to take a city, then you probably should be sending your army somewhere else. Sieging is more for when you have a few armies around and can afford to leave one to do nothing for a few turns.
Be careful of upgrading/tiering up your units too fast, iirc Troy doesn't punish you for having multiple army in the field so you're better off with two weak armies than one strong one.
Put in a lot more hours into Nioh 2, and, I have thoughts, still VERY early on in the game, given the level caps and what people considering "early game" is anything below level 100. And I'm only in the 2nd region, due to a learning curve.
Now, my god, the equipment spam. I hit my cap on loot to carry around, and was shocked to see it's 600 pieces of stuff. six....HUNDRED, weapons and items. I'll purge 100+ items and still barely make it through a mission before that's filled back up. I don't get why there needs to be this much weapon spam. I mean I GUESS it's because the materials needed to craft/upgrade come from breaking down the gear you find, but, why do it like that? It's not fun sifting through HUNDREDS of items, trying to decide which ones might be useful to keep and upgrade, and which ones are just smelting trash. I'm not Demon Ninja, Feudal Accountant! Especially considering all the shit I'm smelting are for smithing recipes that I don't have, and so it's basically just stockpiling tons of stuff for some eventual later date where they might be useful.
The equipment stats also sort of puzzle me. For example, there is one gear type, that always gives you bonuses to stealth. It's not a set bonus, it's just "Scout gear gives you stealth." Ok, fine, no problem. However, there is another gear set, that always gives you bonuses to undamaged foes. Given the name of the gear, it feels like this is supposed to be the "assassin/backstab" gear. Again, in theory, no problem. However, the problem is, that if you have THAT gear on, to give you bonuses to alpha strike damage (which currently are pretty miniscule bonuses), you get spotted too soon to actually get a backstab attack in. So instead, you put on the Scout gear to let you get close enough to actually backstab....and now you're not wearing the armor that gives alpha strike bonuses. So....yeah it's a bit annoying. I'm experimenting with having only a few pieces of Scout for the stealth, but in doing so, it makes the bonus damage to the alpha strike, so minimal I might as well wear basically ANYTHING else that gives other bonuses, as they would probably add up to more damage overall.
That's basically the only new issue I have, as all of my other, previously stated problems are still there. I don't find the core game loop of "bash yourself against an enemy over and over until you either brute force your way through it, or just get lucky and survive the attacks" to be a compelling game loop. Which I know is the core of all Souls games, but I just find it annoying and frustrating, not rewarding. I will give this game at least some credit on giving you a ton of options on how to proceed. You can use magical enhancements on weapons, ninja weapons and bombs, etc. Or just armor and sword and smash things in your way.
Now, my god, the equipment spam. I hit my cap on loot to carry around, and was shocked to see it's 600 pieces of stuff. six....HUNDRED, weapons and items. I'll purge 100+ items and still barely make it through a mission before that's filled back up. I don't get why there needs to be this much weapon spam. I mean I GUESS it's because the materials needed to craft/upgrade come from breaking down the gear you find, but, why do it like that? It's not fun sifting through HUNDREDS of items, trying to decide which ones might be useful to keep and upgrade, and which ones are just smelting trash. I'm not Demon Ninja, Feudal Accountant! Especially considering all the shit I'm smelting are for smithing recipes that I don't have, and so it's basically just stockpiling tons of stuff for some eventual later date where they might be useful.
The equipment stats also sort of puzzle me. For example, there is one gear type, that always gives you bonuses to stealth. It's not a set bonus, it's just "Scout gear gives you stealth." Ok, fine, no problem. However, there is another gear set, that always gives you bonuses to undamaged foes. Given the name of the gear, it feels like this is supposed to be the "assassin/backstab" gear. Again, in theory, no problem. However, the problem is, that if you have THAT gear on, to give you bonuses to alpha strike damage (which currently are pretty miniscule bonuses), you get spotted too soon to actually get a backstab attack in. So instead, you put on the Scout gear to let you get close enough to actually backstab....and now you're not wearing the armor that gives alpha strike bonuses. So....yeah it's a bit annoying. I'm experimenting with having only a few pieces of Scout for the stealth, but in doing so, it makes the bonus damage to the alpha strike, so minimal I might as well wear basically ANYTHING else that gives other bonuses, as they would probably add up to more damage overall.
That's basically the only new issue I have, as all of my other, previously stated problems are still there. I don't find the core game loop of "bash yourself against an enemy over and over until you either brute force your way through it, or just get lucky and survive the attacks" to be a compelling game loop. Which I know is the core of all Souls games, but I just find it annoying and frustrating, not rewarding. I will give this game at least some credit on giving you a ton of options on how to proceed. You can use magical enhancements on weapons, ninja weapons and bombs, etc. Or just armor and sword and smash things in your way.
It's great for all the reasons you described, but I felt the ending ruined the game for me a little.
The game is really lighthearted and silly and it's fun browsing through all the bad websites and then BOOM, mindcrash happens and 6 of the people you've gotten to know are DEAD and it's 20 years later and Tim spent 6 years in jail for something he didn't do. It's tonal whiplash! It was especially annoying since both Re3koning and myself, at the least, were in possession of evidence of Merchantsoft's coverups concerning the health hazards of Hypnospace and could reasonably conclude that it wasn't Tim's hack that caused the injuries, since it was disabled before the crash, but nobody made any effort to expose Merchantsoft and just let Tim get falsely convicted.
Just kind of a downer ending in a game that really didn't need one.
Souls has a bunch of options too, which basically determines how difficult it will be. Magic, tank gear and co-op are generally considered easy modes.
I couldn't really care less about what is considered easy mode or not with the Souls crowd. The amount of internet dick measuring that seems to be integral to enjoying a Souls game for most people who talk about it, isn't something that I lose any sleep over.
Well that’s mostly marketing bs that a lot of nerdlings latched onto. They aren’t cakewalks but most games with difficulty selects end up being tougher on anything above normal. My reply was just to point out that the games don’t need to be played the “beat your head against a wall” way, unless the player insists on sticking to say, a pure lightweight melee build and soloing all bosses. Then you at least need to learn a bit about i frames and stamina management.
Oh I know, I'm not worried about that, and regularly take advantage of the Benevolent Grave system in Nioh 2. Not sure of the Souls equivalent, as it's not a real person, it's just an NPC with your coded stats at the time you drop an item down. Basically you set yourself up at a point in your progression, as an NPC ally for other players to tap into if they want, for help on a mission. It's quite fun, and I use it all the time to finish the fights. I just referred to the "beat your head on a wall" concept because that seems to be the overwhelming theme of most people who talk about the various games. They never talk about the story, or anything other than "omg X was so hard, but I fought him like 300 times and finally beat him!" which is just "beat your head on a wall until it breaks" mentality to me. And I don't find that compelling. If the only reason you're doing something is you're too stubborn to stop doing it, then I have less interest in doing it. For years, the only context of Souls games, from someone hearing other people talking about it around them, is as follows:
Git Gud
Praise the Sun
Onion Bro/Knight/Dude/Etc
X fight was Y hard, I did Z to beat it. I did A to be B, etc.
That's it. Which isn't enough to make me care to play your game. Plus I don't find the art style of the Souls/Blood games all that compelling. It's like someone with an HR Geiger fetish got a chance to splooge their Vore erotica fantasies all over a series of video games. And I just don't care.
Nioh 2 is skirting very close to pushing me into that stage of not caring anymore. The story is....let's say minimal at best, to be polite, with really bad acting, which, I guess if it's supposed to be a cheezy japanese martial arts/wuxia kind of film, mission accomplished I guess. If I could move around with more freedom, like how I see Sekiro allows with the hookshot, and could actually do stealth moves with some consistency, I might enjoy it more. But it's either just not a game that really let's you do that, or it's that I haven't reached the level where that type of gear is available. Which, given 1-100 is considered "early game" it's feeling a lot like the FF 13 thing of "Yeah but after 20+ hours, the game gets good" type of stuff. Which, I dislike.
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There's a rather large amount of discussion on the stories of Dark Souls. The problem is that it's actually really hard to talk about the story of Dark Souls to someone who hasn't played Dark Souls.
It's sort of like trying to explain the Silmarillion to someone who doesn't know anything about Tolkien. There's some stuff, it contradicts some other stuff, and there's a lot of names, and also some things are metaphor and some aren't, but there's sometimes not enough information to separate the metaphors from reality.
There's a huge community of people on Youtube who created entire careers out of analyzing the story and lore of Dark Souls, and a lot of it is really cool. But it also takes effort to understand and figure out, and you'll miss a lot of story if you aren't actively looking for it and working to piece things together.
The in-depth lore discussions tend to happen on forums when the games first come out, and then peter out into just the core youtube and reddit communities later on in the games' lives. If you wanted to see people talking about the lore you really missed the boat since the series ended almost 5 years ago.
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I hear what you're saying.
I don't really understand why the story was the way it was - all the Merchantsoft stuff could have been neat if you could, say, find an ancient shitty FBI website or something and feed them info or something like that, but it feels so much like you're just a bystander. Like, cool. I was totally aware of the douchebaggery, I know there is evidence of the douchebaggery, and yet I did literally nothing in the intervening two decades to help this. Rekoning is equally culpable, but still. What excuse could anyone have for saying nothing.
That said, it did kind of change the game for me. On run one I was just tooling around getting a little too nostalgic for MSpaint webcomics and terrible roleplaying chatrooms. On run two I was a man on a mission, trying to get every ************ I could banned. I realized that when I got this one dude banned he stayed gone, so I went full on commando trying to get rid of every nerd, douche and weirdo I could to save them from the Happening.
If I had gone into this situation expecting more than a nostalgia trip I probably would have enjoyed that attitude flip a lot - it really changes the game from the perspective of a non-entity who's only agency is picking on nerds and time travel. But like you said, going from Grandma Cream to the Mindfreak is too much of a shakeup without a warning.
I was around 5 years ago, and I recall the forums being basically the same consistency of content as they are now. It's why I dislike the series, and the overall fanbase's obsession with it.
Also it would have been nice to actually find out what happened to Dylan after you expose him. His 'apology' was really insincere and lame, and just seemed like he was trying to lay the groundwork for some tactics his lawyer could use in his defense. I was actually expecting the final version of his game to be some sort of trap that would kill our character and when it turned out it wasn't it was really hard to tell whether or not it was meant to be Dylan committing suicide himself.
The detectiving was a blast though, and it was always fun when you were able to put together hints and clues to figure out how to do something new, like access everybody's FLST with their headband ID, but I wish there would have been a little bit more. It really does have one of the most organic puzzle systems I've seen in a game. Right up there with Return of the Obra Dinn and Outer Wilds for actually requiring player deductions for progress.
But that last chapter really got me down. It was like going through the old Escapist archives and seeing all the posters who abandoned the site years ago. Except you actually know which ones are dead and can't just assume the best. These kind of endings are always a little perverse. The developer gives you a nice nostalgia trip and then kills the 90s all over again, like they take pleasure in it.
I just beat the first main boss of Persona 5 Strikers and I'm having a lot of fun so far. Omega Force have done a good job at 'adapting' Persona 5's style and gameplay to real time combat.
Having a blast with Infamous Second Son. Got the western side of the map cleared, working my way east. It took a couple hours to get back into a nice flow, but it’s a pretty pleasant gameplay loop. The smoke powers are a somewhat ingenious way to go, considering the destruction you cause to the D.U.P. fools yields more smoke sources, so you’re never really scrounging for power when you need it. You do still need to be careful as getting to close to them is very damaging even on Normal.
The most tedious part of this one will again be collecting shards, but I’ve heard it’s not as bad as the first two games. Planning on my first play through being good, and then doing Expert as a baddie as it requires a second play through anyways for both endings.
The most tedious part of this one will again be collecting shards, but I’ve heard it’s not as bad as the first two games. Planning on my first play through being good, and then doing Expert as a baddie as it requires a second play through anyways for both endings.
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I have once again been summoned to the farlands, and so I must leave my PC and Death Stranding behind. I'll come back to it when I get to live in my own fucking house again, but for the time being its mobile gaming time for old Roy.
Dusted off the 3DS and picked up a LOT of secondhand games for basically nothing. Prof Layton and Phoenix W here I come. Before that though I decided to try to take a trip down memory lane with Pokemon Ultramegahyper Moon for some low stakes relaxing gameplay. I haven't played a pokemon game since I think Black/White so I was prepped for a whole new world.
I hate it. I hate 3D sprites and I hate million year long animations and I hate that the entire first island out of five seemed to be a tutorial.
The 3D sprite and camera on rails makes the world feel smaller because you just see whats in front of you rather than a local overview. It also makes it kind of easy to get lost once the terrain becomes more complicated than a straight road because the camera doesn't really flip around for you in any sort of rush. It also doesn't commit to being over the shoulder, top corner, or panning so when it changes it can be a little confusing. The animation swings between being reasonable and being way too long, and there's the odd bit of animation jank present - move animations and character animations are separate so now and then you see a pokemon make a motion that doesn't make sense with the move animation. My cat bites people by sort of punching her paw forward. And the first island is just kind of short and crappy. I don't need a multi hour tutorial and I really question if 12 year olds do either - I get that I'm a longtime vet of this series so I probably pick up certain things fairly instantly compared to a newcomer, but nothing being explained is that far off of what a kid who watches the cartoon would expect. You fight, you catch, you be the very best.
But whatever, at its heart its the same game I always loved playing, just with a new skin. Its hard to identify any specific meaningful innovation in the game thus far beyond the excommunication of gym battles. Now you perform Island Trials, and from the trials you get Z-Crystals which let you do magic sometimes. On one hand its easy to roll the eyes and call the trials gym battles with a new coat of paint, but on the other hand they do at least provide a nice change of scenery and challenge type - you basically explore a dungeon of varying design, beat up some little guys and then beat up a big guy. Its not like gym battles were in and of themselves that interesting, so transitioning from them to a kind of miniature dungeon crawl is a reasonably positive move. Dungeons/caves were always a nice part of the old games and making them less of a transitory point and more of a goal seems like a decent choice.
There are some other additions now. You can groom your pokemon which is a thing you do after battle that takes time and isn't fun so I ignore it. You can also fight multiple wild pokemon simultaneously - they use a "call for help" move during battle and sometimes a bro shows up - but functionally all it does is kind of drag out the encounter and make catching certain pokemon harder. God what else. I dunno, not much. There are some nice little things where people will interact with you and ask for your help and you can choose to do it for them. Stuff that I would generally consider nice polish but otherwise totally un-noteworthy.
Also your pokedex is a pokemon that communicates with you via the touchscreen which is not annoying at all.
All that aside I just caught this fucker and now I love the game:
Its a lucha libre bird. I don't really need any other pokemon now so I'll see how the rest of the game goes.
Dusted off the 3DS and picked up a LOT of secondhand games for basically nothing. Prof Layton and Phoenix W here I come. Before that though I decided to try to take a trip down memory lane with Pokemon Ultramegahyper Moon for some low stakes relaxing gameplay. I haven't played a pokemon game since I think Black/White so I was prepped for a whole new world.
I hate it. I hate 3D sprites and I hate million year long animations and I hate that the entire first island out of five seemed to be a tutorial.
The 3D sprite and camera on rails makes the world feel smaller because you just see whats in front of you rather than a local overview. It also makes it kind of easy to get lost once the terrain becomes more complicated than a straight road because the camera doesn't really flip around for you in any sort of rush. It also doesn't commit to being over the shoulder, top corner, or panning so when it changes it can be a little confusing. The animation swings between being reasonable and being way too long, and there's the odd bit of animation jank present - move animations and character animations are separate so now and then you see a pokemon make a motion that doesn't make sense with the move animation. My cat bites people by sort of punching her paw forward. And the first island is just kind of short and crappy. I don't need a multi hour tutorial and I really question if 12 year olds do either - I get that I'm a longtime vet of this series so I probably pick up certain things fairly instantly compared to a newcomer, but nothing being explained is that far off of what a kid who watches the cartoon would expect. You fight, you catch, you be the very best.
But whatever, at its heart its the same game I always loved playing, just with a new skin. Its hard to identify any specific meaningful innovation in the game thus far beyond the excommunication of gym battles. Now you perform Island Trials, and from the trials you get Z-Crystals which let you do magic sometimes. On one hand its easy to roll the eyes and call the trials gym battles with a new coat of paint, but on the other hand they do at least provide a nice change of scenery and challenge type - you basically explore a dungeon of varying design, beat up some little guys and then beat up a big guy. Its not like gym battles were in and of themselves that interesting, so transitioning from them to a kind of miniature dungeon crawl is a reasonably positive move. Dungeons/caves were always a nice part of the old games and making them less of a transitory point and more of a goal seems like a decent choice.
There are some other additions now. You can groom your pokemon which is a thing you do after battle that takes time and isn't fun so I ignore it. You can also fight multiple wild pokemon simultaneously - they use a "call for help" move during battle and sometimes a bro shows up - but functionally all it does is kind of drag out the encounter and make catching certain pokemon harder. God what else. I dunno, not much. There are some nice little things where people will interact with you and ask for your help and you can choose to do it for them. Stuff that I would generally consider nice polish but otherwise totally un-noteworthy.
Also your pokedex is a pokemon that communicates with you via the touchscreen which is not annoying at all.
All that aside I just caught this fucker and now I love the game:
Its a lucha libre bird. I don't really need any other pokemon now so I'll see how the rest of the game goes.
Im in between a few games at the moment.
I stopped playing AC3 because... well, I guess I got burnt out. Playing 4 AC games consecutively got me, in the end. I'll probably revisit it again, at some point, but for the moment, I think I've moved on.
I tried to get back into Total War: Warhammer - and I don't think that the campaign is for me. Sieges are such a chore, and I dislike how static the fights get. You roll in with your big army, then you fight faction X. Then you continue to exclusively fight faction X for 5 or 6 battles, or whatever, then you wipe them out, and move onto faction Y, and repeat. Maybe I will like Skirmish battles more, but campaigns are pretty tiresome.
Otherwise, the usual Halo MCC challenge grind, etc, etc
Im finally also trying Half-Life Alyx. Its pretty fun. I haven't really engaged with any combat yet, so im pretty excited for that. Currently, im mostly just trying to dial in the settings, because it jitters quite a lot (High settings, Quest 2, 1080TI/16GB RAM/i5 9600K). Im sure i'll figure it out.
I stopped playing AC3 because... well, I guess I got burnt out. Playing 4 AC games consecutively got me, in the end. I'll probably revisit it again, at some point, but for the moment, I think I've moved on.
I tried to get back into Total War: Warhammer - and I don't think that the campaign is for me. Sieges are such a chore, and I dislike how static the fights get. You roll in with your big army, then you fight faction X. Then you continue to exclusively fight faction X for 5 or 6 battles, or whatever, then you wipe them out, and move onto faction Y, and repeat. Maybe I will like Skirmish battles more, but campaigns are pretty tiresome.
Otherwise, the usual Halo MCC challenge grind, etc, etc
Im finally also trying Half-Life Alyx. Its pretty fun. I haven't really engaged with any combat yet, so im pretty excited for that. Currently, im mostly just trying to dial in the settings, because it jitters quite a lot (High settings, Quest 2, 1080TI/16GB RAM/i5 9600K). Im sure i'll figure it out.