What are you currently playing?

[Dalisclock]

Not currently "playing" it yet but I've decided after Wind Waker I'm gonna get back into RPGs for a bit and play PATHFINDER KINGMAKER and hope I get some of the "Leading a small kingdom" flavor that Dragon Age Inquisition both promised and mostly denied me.

I install it and decide to check it out just to see what awaits me. Main menu, fine. Character Portrait, not what I'm used to seeing as the first option for character creation but sure why not? Then I get to race selection, which gives me something like 8 different choices, which generally hits the fantasy race tropes pretty faithfully(Human, Elf, Dwarf, little person/hobbit, half orc, and so on) and all of these have racial traits which is fine and expected for RPGs, though I don't know if those traits help me or not. Then make my character face/body, etc. So far, so good.

Then I hit the Class selection screen and that's where everything grinds to a fucking halt. There are a dozen different classes to pick from.....and they have subclasses as well. So I start looking at the classes, then at the sub classes, then at the racial traits again and then I back out of the game to the desktop at that point because I realize I have no fucking clue how I want to set this up and it's a long fucking game. It's apparently much more like a D&D experience then Dragon Age was.....and Dragon Age has 3 classes(with some specializations down the line).

I don't think I've had a case of Choice Paralysis this bad for a long fucking time. I feel like, yeah, this probably appeals to Tabletop nerds like nothing else but I'm kind of at a loss which of these classes are worth playing in this particular game(at which point I could probably pick the race which best complements that) but....Well, shit.

I've spent the last couple days doing research on what classes and such are worth it and I still haven't really decided, which is probably the most homework I've done for a game for a long fucking time but I also know fucking up the character creator on games like this can fuck you hard in the long run(and again, long fucking game) so I feel like I need to get this right now. It doesn't help the community suggests OP builds but apparently those are only really needed if you're playing on the harder difficulties(which I'm not, I picked normal for a reason) so most builds are viable. Which both does and doesn't help because now I'm back to trying to figure out what I might have the most fun playing as.

 

[meiam]

Not currently "playing" it yet but I've decided after Wind Waker I'm gonna get back into RPGs for a bit and play PATHFINDER KINGMAKER and hope I get some of the "Leading a small kingdom" flavor that Dragon Age Inquisition both promised and mostly denied me.

I install it and decide to check it out just to see what awaits me. Main menu, fine. Character Portrait, not what I'm used to seeing as the first option for character creation but sure why not? Then I get to race selection, which gives me something like 8 different choices, which generally hits the fantasy race tropes pretty faithfully(Human, Elf, Dwarf, little person/hobbit, half orc, and so on) and all of these have racial traits which is fine and expected for RPGs, though I don't know if those traits help me or not. Then make my character face/body, etc. So far, so good.

Then I hit the Class selection screen and that's where everything grinds to a fucking halt. There are a dozen different classes to pick from.....and they have subclasses as well. So I start looking at the classes, then at the sub classes, then at the racial traits again and then I back out of the game to the desktop at that point because I realize I have no fucking clue how I want to set this up and it's a long fucking game. It's apparently much more like a D&D experience then Dragon Age was.....and Dragon Age has 3 classes(with some specializations down the line).

I don't think I've had a case of Choice Paralysis this bad for a long fucking time. I feel like, yeah, this probably appeals to Tabletop nerds like nothing else but I'm kind of at a loss which of these classes are worth playing in this particular game(at which point I could probably pick the race which best complements that) but....Well, shit.

I've spent the last couple days doing research on what classes and such are worth it and I still haven't really decided, which is probably the most homework I've done for a game for a long fucking time but I also know fucking up the character creator on games like this can fuck you hard in the long run(and again, long fucking game) so I feel like I need to get this right now. It doesn't help the community suggests OP builds but apparently those are only really needed if you're playing on the harder difficulties(which I'm not, I picked normal for a reason) so most builds are viable. Which both does and doesn't help because now I'm back to trying to figure out what I might have the most fun playing as.

Personally figuring out what class I'd play was by far the most fun I had with pathfinder, so to me that's the meat of the game. What you can do is change the savefile exp value so you get to level 20 right away and then you can play around with class combinations and get a feel for it.

The system does have a couple of massive issue, one is that a lot of the archetype overlap significantly, which means some sub class makes other irrelevant (wrath of the rigtheous is really bad for that). Also if you play real time, some of the tooltip still use turn base in their description (despite turn base not even being available at release). Another is that you have to specialize in one of the dozens of weapon when you have no way of knowing what weapon the game will give you, some of the weapon are hyperspecialized for specific build, so it might be a good idea to have re specing allowed so that if you specialize in say long sword but then find a bastard sword that would be perfect for your build, you can change it.

I would also avoid the community super OP built, especially if you play on normal, most of them are really cheesy and break the game. Pen and paper system work well when your stats are within range of your opponent stats, but once you go above you quickly end up where you can dodge all attack and land crit on most hit and that's pretty boring.

 

[Drathnoxis]

Chasm

Metroidvania with randomly generated dungeons, or rather randomly laid-out dungeons. I get the appeal in a roguelike but what's the point if the dungeon doesn't reset when you die? I would only appreciate the gimmick during a second playthrough, and I'm not convinced rearranging the five or six types of rooms in between checkpoints would make for much of a game changer.

Other than being able to seed different maps each game, everything else is more or less par for the course. It doesn't have much of a personality. The way the dungeons are layered and you keep uncovering new ways back to town reminds me of SteamWorld Dig but without the strong surface/underground feedback. In Dig you mine ore so you can sell it back in town to further expedite your mining (make your lamp last longer, bigger inventory, stronger/faster mining equipment, halve the cost of steampunk tech, etc). In Chasm there's rarely a reason to go back to town. You can heal underground just fine at statues and the RNG keeps feeding me better equipment without having to go to the shops, which are expensive AF anyway.

Yeah, I didn't see the point of the randomization either, just seemed like wasted effort. Overall, I thought the game was decent but nothing amazing.

 

[Piscian]

Finally sat down and beat "South Park: Stick of truth" tonight. Pretty short only took me a few days and I completed every thing you can do in the game. Very solid RPG with a lot of laugh out loud moments. All in all I still like Fractured, but hole better as the combat was SRPG and a little deeper. This game also never quite reaches the height of craig and tweaks super gay anime finale. This one its just you and active swapable squadmate each with 4-5 skills. Its funny I dont watch southpark. I get the humor, but the show kind of wears on me. Ill watch an episode here and there, but it starts to feel redundant pretty quick. I think it might benefit me because all the humor is completely fresh where as I suspect viewers of the show might see some of these jokes as redundant. Apparently chef died at some point before this game, news to me, but theres references to it in the story.

I get that southpark isnt for everyone. I had to fight a giant aborted fetus mutated by nazi space serum and travel through mr slaves rectum. I will say the game never really feels offensive or mean. Theres a quest where you gotta play hide and seek with some preschoolers. Literally nothing bad happens, you just find each one while exploring and they say something painfully adorable and thats it. The game is surprisingly confident in when to be outrageous and when to just be a good game.

I wish theyd make more of these contemporary setting rpgs with good writing and pacing. I do not want 100 hour gobbledegook jrpgs with completely unapproachable stories and bafflingly weird characters. I didn't even bother with shinmagami tensei V or whatever. I took one look at the world and protagonist and noped the fuck out of that.

Ive been putting off tales of arise for weeks now. Its just looks like its gonna put me to sleep.

 

[BrawlMan]

Final Vendetta (PS4) - I finally accomplished my Hard 1CC, No Death, All S-Ranks Arcade Run. I did this with Claire. Her having the fastest speed and the most combos helps a bunch. It's still no walk in the park, yet I am glad the deed has been accomplished.

 

[Bedinsis]

I finished Zero Time Dilemma. It was not worth playing through.

Spoiler: Discussion about plot twists

I encountered four plot twists that I wish to discuss:

1. Sean is a robot.
2. Sigma and Diana conceived Phi and Delta.
3. The three wards are actually one and the same.
4. Q aka Delta had actually been present the entire time.

Sean being a robot was a genuine surprise for me but I thought it was poorly tied into the main plot, i.e. I don't think there was anything that hinted towards his nature. There was however nothing that I think suggested he was not a robot so I call it a decent surprise.

Phi's parentage I thought had a bit of foreshadowing in that Phi actually was a redhead so once the scene played out and I heard them suggesting naming the daughter "Phi" my mouth was agape and I was like "No way!" and then I recalled the aforementioned scene and went "Oh, that scene. I see.". It was a mildly foreshadowed plot twist and a good surprise.

The three wards being the one and the same and the scenes supposedly taking place simultaneously was actually shifted by a couple hours: brilliant. That is a genuinely clever twist and the med room where the walls' appearance could change serving as foreshadowing of the technology being present was clever. The fact that the wards were laid out in a way so that if you tried to overlap them you would see that rooms present in one sections would be missing in others: brilliant. It is therefore an awful shame that I never got to look at the map. I remember in Virtue's Last Reward where they would make sure to showcase exactly where on the map the party currently were in a way that made me think this would turn out to be significant, but it never did. In this game, the maps were shown seldom enough that there was no way that I would be able to predict it. Couldn't you have shown the map a bit more often, game? I suspect I would not figure it out either way, so it would be one of those golden plot twist where afterwards you go "I don't get how I possible could not have seen that coming!". Just add a small scene at the start of each escape room where someone pulls out the map and goes "Oh, we must be in [name of room]", that would also have highlighted that someone must've been transporting them into the rooms, something I only really considered once Zero brought it up to Sean.

A fourth character having been present in one of the teams the entire time was Just. So. Dumb. When that scene played out I just went "Wait what? Wait, what just happened? Where did this guy come from? Is he the dog that suddenly turned human or something? Wh-What? What happened?". I had to go online to find out that "Oh, he had always been there, they just never acknowledged him.". This was the dumbest plot twist, I honestly think it turning out that the dog was actually sapient and behind it all(maybe Delta had the technology to inhabit animals) would have been a better twist; that at least would've revealed additional information of an element already present.

Aside from that I am filled with questions.

How can Delta and Phi exist in a timeline where Sigma and Diana never conceived them? This is not a minor detail; Delta explicitly mentioned that one of the objectives were to ensure that he was conceived.

How come the presence of a group of SHIFTers was enough to let the two non-SHIFTers Eric and Mira also SHIFT? That came out of nowhere.

At the end of the day they all had access to all the memories from the facility, in other words, they know Mira is a serial killer. Does that not warrant even a mention or a comment? In particular from Eric; he was stabbed in the back by a woman he thought loved him.

How can Delta be alive at 124 years old?

Who even killed Junpei? The rightmost branches had a bunch of unexplained murders; Mira was killed and Sean had to explain to Eric lest he be shot and Junpei was killed and Carlos had to explain to Akane lest he be chainsawed and further down that storyline Zero appeared as a recording "because Carlos killed him". I wanted to know what lead to Carlos being willing to murder, identify Zero and exactly what went down there. Instead I think Zero made an off-hand mention of what went down that I found lacking.

If I were to suggest an improvement to the game that is easy enough to implement that a modder could do it: after the initial vote of what team to eliminate, only unlock the branch that corresponds with that decision. As it were, I never knew if all members of another team being dead meant that they had been killed in various disputes or if it were due to the result of the initial vote. That would've made the story more comprehensive and it would've reinforced that it is the player that is making decisions. Eventually you would run out of things to do other than making another team be dead, and that would further highlight how you are meant to progress: by going back and making the other decision.

Of course, that would've made the opening of the game even slower (since I suspect most people are nice and therefore they'd pick the "let's kill no team"-option) since the no-kill branch is the one with the backstories and no actual puzzle rooms, so maybe "improvement" is the wrong word.

While I disliked how callous and cynical Junpei was I liked that he got some character development. I think. I remember thinking that while playing. But what was it? ...Gee, this is what I dislike about anachronistic story telling: it is confusing.

A scene where Sean and Zero interacts I was a bit surprised that I thought was a lot better acted than the other ones. It was only after thinking about it I realized why I thought so: they are both masked characters, so the facial animations do not interrupt the drama. Basically I'm saying the facial animations are bad.

I'm having a hard time recommending this to people that have not played the previous titles; there are just so much continuity that I suspect newbies would be lost. And I don't recommend it to people that have played the previous titles either. One of the plot twists was so dumb, and the puzzle rooms were not really challenging.

 

[Absent]

I have started playing Juno New Origins. And I'd say : stick to Kerbal.

I don't like the tone of Juno, so far. Its graphics and designs are bland and serious, and I like Kerbal's odd mix of cartooney and realistic better. To compensate for this lack of personality, Juno doubles down on the humour in the text descriptions, which feels forced and sometimes just unhelpful in terms of required info. Its tech tree has "funny" category titles that also feel like out of place jokes, and don't really help you locate helpful techs at a glance. And the interface is generally quite ugly (the rockets are designed in a void, in contrast to KSP's hangar), showing that the game's roots is mobile devices. And, well, it's just odd to have human-like characters, in a scaled down system of imaginary planets with odd fantasy names that mimick a bit Kerbal's universe, trying to be a bit evocative to our solar system yet different from KSP.

It has qualities. I suppose its simplified graphics mean it runs more smoothly on more machines. It has fully customizable parts (you pick a generic fuel tank, and you shape it yourself, and parameter its content, etc), so it's more of a "modeling clay" approach to creating your rockets (or planes, or cars, etc). More importantly, its engines are very very detailed : as you shape their nozzles and tweak other aspects, you see how it alters their performance in the vacuum, in the atmosphere, etc, as its displayed stats adjust in real time. By zooming on such details, Juno gets more educative on some aspects that KSP leaves aside. In that sense, it's a fun complement for the most technically curious.

I haven't played that much. I've reached orbit, by blindly following a tutorial included in a contract, so it didn't have the epic, funny and frustrating trial and error aspect of KSP. I'm underwhelmed so far. Maybe things get better later, we'll see. For the time being, I'd describe it as KSP without the fun, without the majesty, without the stress and the beauty, without the laughters. Without the magic. I expect to eventually regret having bought it. There's still a chance I'm wrong.

 

[Drathnoxis]

I finished Zero Time Dilemma. It was not worth playing through.

Spoiler: Discussion about plot twists

I encountered four plot twists that I wish to discuss:

1. Sean is a robot.
2. Sigma and Diana conceived Phi and Delta.
3. The three wards are actually one and the same.
4. Q aka Delta had actually been present the entire time.

Sean being a robot was a genuine surprise for me but I thought it was poorly tied into the main plot, i.e. I don't think there was anything that hinted towards his nature. There was however nothing that I think suggested he was not a robot so I call it a decent surprise.

Phi's parentage I thought had a bit of foreshadowing in that Phi actually was a redhead so once the scene played out and I heard them suggesting naming the daughter "Phi" my mouth was agape and I was like "No way!" and then I recalled the aforementioned scene and went "Oh, that scene. I see.". It was a mildly foreshadowed plot twist and a good surprise.

The three wards being the one and the same and the scenes supposedly taking place simultaneously was actually shifted by a couple hours: brilliant. That is a genuinely clever twist and the med room where the walls' appearance could change serving as foreshadowing of the technology being present was clever. The fact that the wards were laid out in a way so that if you tried to overlap them you would see that rooms present in one sections would be missing in others: brilliant. It is therefore an awful shame that I never got to look at the map. I remember in Virtue's Last Reward where they would make sure to showcase exactly where on the map the party currently were in a way that made me think this would turn out to be significant, but it never did. In this game, the maps were shown seldom enough that there was no way that I would be able to predict it. Couldn't you have shown the map a bit more often, game? I suspect I would not figure it out either way, so it would be one of those golden plot twist where afterwards you go "I don't get how I possible could not have seen that coming!". Just add a small scene at the start of each escape room where someone pulls out the map and goes "Oh, we must be in [name of room]", that would also have highlighted that someone must've been transporting them into the rooms, something I only really considered once Zero brought it up to Sean.

A fourth character having been present in one of the teams the entire time was Just. So. Dumb. When that scene played out I just went "Wait what? Wait, what just happened? Where did this guy come from? Is he the dog that suddenly turned human or something? Wh-What? What happened?". I had to go online to find out that "Oh, he had always been there, they just never acknowledged him.". This was the dumbest plot twist, I honestly think it turning out that the dog was actually sapient and behind it all(maybe Delta had the technology to inhabit animals) would have been a better twist; that at least would've revealed additional information of an element already present.

Aside from that I am filled with questions.

How can Delta and Phi exist in a timeline where Sigma and Diana never conceived them? This is not a minor detail; Delta explicitly mentioned that one of the objectives were to ensure that he was conceived.

How come the presence of a group of SHIFTers was enough to let the two non-SHIFTers Eric and Mira also SHIFT? That came out of nowhere.

At the end of the day they all had access to all the memories from the facility, in other words, they know Mira is a serial killer. Does that not warrant even a mention or a comment? In particular from Eric; he was stabbed in the back by a woman he thought loved him.

How can Delta be alive at 124 years old?

Who even killed Junpei? The rightmost branches had a bunch of unexplained murders; Mira was killed and Sean had to explain to Eric lest he be shot and Junpei was killed and Carlos had to explain to Akane lest he be chainsawed and further down that storyline Zero appeared as a recording "because Carlos killed him". I wanted to know what lead to Carlos being willing to murder, identify Zero and exactly what went down there. Instead I think Zero made an off-hand mention of what went down that I found lacking.

If I were to suggest an improvement to the game that is easy enough to implement that a modder could do it: after the initial vote of what team to eliminate, only unlock the branch that corresponds with that decision. As it were, I never knew if all members of another team being dead meant that they had been killed in various disputes or if it were due to the result of the initial vote. That would've made the story more comprehensive and it would've reinforced that it is the player that is making decisions. Eventually you would run out of things to do other than making another team be dead, and that would further highlight how you are meant to progress: by going back and making the other decision.

Of course, that would've made the opening of the game even slower (since I suspect most people are nice and therefore they'd pick the "let's kill no team"-option) since the no-kill branch is the one with the backstories and no actual puzzle rooms, so maybe "improvement" is the wrong word.

While I disliked how callous and cynical Junpei was I liked that he got some character development. I think. I remember thinking that while playing. But what was it? ...Gee, this is what I dislike about anachronistic story telling: it is confusing.

A scene where Sean and Zero interacts I was a bit surprised that I thought was a lot better acted than the other ones. It was only after thinking about it I realized why I thought so: they are both masked characters, so the facial animations do not interrupt the drama. Basically I'm saying the facial animations are bad.

I'm having a hard time recommending this to people that have not played the previous titles; there are just so much continuity that I suspect newbies would be lost. And I don't recommend it to people that have played the previous titles either. One of the plot twists was so dumb, and the puzzle rooms were not really challenging.

I really do think that is the worst plot twist I've ever seen, I even made a thread about it when I first saw it, and it hasn't been dethroned for me in 5 years. It's so bad because it's only a plot twist for the player. Everybody else knows that there is an old man in a wheelchair sitting there the whole game and only makes extremely oblong references to him. "What about Q? He's..." and stuff like that. I think you can see his shadow at a couple points, and a couple other blink and you'll miss it hints, but it's not enough that anybody could actually deduce his presence because nobody ever behaves rationally about him. Show him on screen one time and every single person playing this game would say "that's him, that's Zero!" because he's suspicious as heck! But nobody just straight out questions "why do all the other teams have 3 members but we have 4?" or "Why is Q the team leader when he's a comatose old man in a wheelchair?" Gah! It's so stupid! And the fact they trick you into thinking that Sean is Q. Oh, I know Uchikoshi, you never actually 'called' him Q, but you did. If he wasn't Q why did Eric let him make the votes? There's no way Eric would have let him do that if he wasn't specified leader. Or when Mira shoots Sean and the computer lists Q as deceased, and you need to make the assumption she didn't just shoot him twice.

And then there's the Delta's Mind Hack powers that just come completely out of nowhere and are ludicrously overpowered, but you can't even think about how ridiculous it is that he can see into every timeline and use it to plan this ridiculous, pointless game because you are so distracted by the fact that there was an old man in a wheelchair, just off screen the entire game! I love the moment at the end where Eric shoots him with the shotgun and he says "Understand now, this is my power! Ugh (dies)" But of course, that was all a part of his plan too, and if it seems like it's stupid and doesn't make any sense that's just because we can't understand his 'complex motives.'

The thing I hate the most about ZTD, though is the fact that it does almost nothing with the set-up of VLR. We spent a whole game in VLR getting to the point where Phi and Sigma could jump back in time and stop a terrorist from releasing a deadly virus, and then we spent another game getting to the point where Phi and Sigma and a couple more people could... stop a terrorist from releasing a deadly virus. VLR is almost completely irrelevant. Dio and Brother don't matter at all because it was a fake cult of clones made for the purpose of setting up the events of ZTD or something stupid like that. VLR may as well never have existed because anything of significance is retconned in ZTD, even the color of Phi's eyebrows are retconned. All that and we STILL don't have a proper resolution at the end of ZTD. Frankly, after ZTD I was amazed when AI came out and was actually really good.

I'm not entirely sure, but I think Mira was supposed to be responsible for the unexplained murders. I think Zero would wake her up and she'd do what comes natural and then he'd knock her back out with the convenient amnesia drug.

Phi and Delta exist because the time machine sent copies of them to a new timeline and you don't need to worry about causality because time travel and multiverse theory just make everything work out. Or they would, if we didn't live in the universe that god abandoned.

I'm not sure if I agree, I think I might recommend that someone play the game, as long as they know to treat it as a comedy. Better than playing I would recommend someone watch a let's play or a stream, because bad games are always more fun with commentary. I watched Supergreatfriend play the whole series and I think it's a lot of fun that way.

Edit: Also, I forgot, how do you feel about snails now?

 

[Bedinsis]

I really do think that is the worst plot twist I've ever seen, I even made a thread about it when I first saw it, and it hasn't been dethroned for me in 5 years. It's so bad because it's only a plot twist for the player. Everybody else knows that there is an old man in a wheelchair sitting there the whole game and only makes extremely oblong references to him. "What about Q? He's..." and stuff like that. I think you can see his shadow at a couple points, and a couple other blink and you'll miss it hints, but it's not enough that anybody could actually deduce his presence because nobody ever behaves rationally about him. Show him on screen one time and every single person playing this game would say "that's him, that's Zero!" because he's suspicious as heck! But nobody just straight out questions "why do all the other teams have 3 members but we have 4?" or "Why is Q the team leader when he's a comatose old man in a wheelchair?" Gah! It's so stupid! And the fact they trick you into thinking that Sean is Q. Oh, I know Uchikoshi, you never actually 'called' him Q, but you did. If he wasn't Q why did Eric let him make the votes? There's no way Eric would have let him do that if he wasn't specified leader. Or when Mira shoots Sean and the computer lists Q as deceased, and you need to make the assumption she didn't just shoot him twice.

And then there's the Delta's Mind Hack powers that just come completely out of nowhere and are ludicrously overpowered, but you can't even think about how ridiculous it is that he can see into every timeline and use it to plan this ridiculous, pointless game because you are so distracted by the fact that there was an old man in a wheelchair, just off screen the entire game! I love the moment at the end where Eric shoots him with the shotgun and he says "Understand now, this is my power! Ugh (dies)" But of course, that was all a part of his plan too, and if it seems like it's stupid and doesn't make any sense that's just because we can't understand his 'complex motives.'

The thing I hate the most about ZTD, though is the fact that it does almost nothing with the set-up of VLR. We spent a whole game in VLR getting to the point where Phi and Sigma could jump back in time and stop a terrorist from releasing a deadly virus, and then we spent another game getting to the point where Phi and Sigma and a couple more people could... stop a terrorist from releasing a deadly virus. VLR is almost completely irrelevant. Dio and Brother don't matter at all because it was a fake cult of clones made for the purpose of setting up the events of ZTD or something stupid like that. VLR may as well never have existed because anything of significance is retconned in ZTD, even the color of Phi's eyebrows are retconned. All that and we STILL don't have a proper resolution at the end of ZTD. Frankly, after ZTD I was amazed when AI came out and was actually really good.

I'm not entirely sure, but I think Mira was supposed to be responsible for the unexplained murders. I think Zero would wake her up and she'd do what comes natural and then he'd knock her back out with the convenient amnesia drug.

Phi and Delta exist because the time machine sent copies of them to a new timeline and you don't need to worry about causality because time travel and multiverse theory just make everything work out. Or they would, if we didn't live in the universe that god abandoned.

I'm not sure if I agree, I think I might recommend that someone play the game, as long as they know to treat it as a comedy. Better than playing I would recommend someone watch a let's play or a stream, because bad games are always more fun with commentary. I watched Supergreatfriend play the whole series and I think it's a lot of fun that way.

Edit: Also, I forgot, how do you feel about snails now?

I think the intention behind the dumb plot twist was to replicate a twist from the last game, namely the twist that the player character is not exactly the guy we saw in the opening cut scene. In both instances it was something the characters knew but did not comment on because for them it was "normal" and which acted as a surprise for the player. The reason it worked in VLR (for me at least) was that the cutscenes never showed the protagonist's face so it was obvious something was going on and the reveal was also a reveal for the protagonist so it was more relatable. It should also be mentioned that if a plot twist wows the audience enough they can be stunned enough that they don't notice the plot holes that might be present. In ZTD though the reveal was not impressive, it was confusing, and it brings up questions about previous behaviour, i.e. if it makes sense that they would never mention that there was a fourth guy hanging around in the Q-team. It furthermore felt like they pulled it from nowhere since there were basically no hints to it.

The thing that I disliked the most is that the structure was so confusing. Compare and contrast.

999: A sequence of decisions that you have to replay to get the full story. That's like a novel with a few choices thrown in, that's comprehensive.
VLR: The choices are now more like a spreadsheet and they frequently interrupts the story because you haven't learnt enough to continue along the story. That's is less comprehensive.
ZTD: The choices are still a spreadsheet with interrupted endpoints, but you don't know in what order they occurred and what has happened so far in any story. That is even less comprehensive.

It brings to mind an observation that I've made now that I've tried to play a few visual novels: the ones I like the most are those that are relatively linear, so there is no need to recall what is different in the different storylines and there is no need to sit through all the repeated dialogue that comes from reloading.

Regarding snails: after a while I tuned out when the snail story was told since they felt to always be saying the same basic thing: small changes can have big consequences. Which I understand is par for the course in visual novels to bring up.

Incidentally, @BrawlMan I've seen you upvote these posts; what do you think about Zero Time Dilemma, if you have played it?

 

[BrawlMan]

Incidentally, @BrawlMan I've seen you upvote these posts; what do you think about Zero Time Dilemma, if you have played it?

I never played it, but I did see a playthrough once. You are more or less right about the plot twists being bad and dumb.

 

[Drathnoxis]

Played Later Alligator. It was a silly little collection of minigames posing as a mystery story about who is trying to kill Pat on his birthday. The mystery is completely obvious from the get go, and the minigames are utterly dull, so the main draw is the energetic animation and quirky dialogue, which is, admittedly, quite fun. The writing did start to grate on me after a while, though. There's only so much "haha, I'm so quirky, look at how quirky I am" you can take before it gets annoying, and the game is just a little too long. There is also a really weird time management aspect of the game. I don't even know why it's in there, because when you run out of time you get the ending and then can restart the day with all of the progress you've made. It's also unclear how much time each activity takes unless you are constantly keeping an eye on the clock. The game would have been better if this aspect had been taken out completely, there's no purpose to it other than forcing you to do the 3 mandatory mini-games over again each time you play through the game. I ended up needing to go through the game 3 times. Twice to get all the family member portraits, and the last time because I was missing one puzzle piece and I hadn't placed the last portrait in the frame (didn't end up mattering). So I spent most of the day just opening up the portrait minigame and closing it which uses half an hour a pop for some reason.

Overall it was fairly charming, but did manage to wear out it's welcome despite being a short game.

 

[Worgen]

Played Later Alligator. It was a silly little collection of minigames posing as a mystery story about who is trying to kill Pat on his birthday. The mystery is completely obvious from the get go, and the minigames are utterly dull, so the main draw is the energetic animation and quirky dialogue, which is, admittedly, quite fun. The writing did start to grate on me after a while, though. There's only so much "haha, I'm so quirky, look at how quirky I am" you can take before it gets annoying, and the game is just a little too long. There is also a really weird time management aspect of the game. I don't even know why it's in there, because when you run out of time you get the ending and then can restart the day with all of the progress you've made. It's also unclear how much time each activity takes unless you are constantly keeping an eye on the clock. The game would have been better if this aspect had been taken out completely, there's no purpose to it other than forcing you to do the 3 mandatory mini-games over again each time you play through the game. I ended up needing to go through the game 3 times. Twice to get all the family member portraits, and the last time because I was missing one puzzle piece and I hadn't placed the last portrait in the frame (didn't end up mattering). So I spent most of the day just opening up the portrait minigame and closing it which uses half an hour a pop for some reason.

Overall it was fairly charming, but did manage to wear out it's welcome despite being a short game.

That was one of those games I wanted to love, but only played for an hour in a half and then did something else.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

So I started playing Final Fantasy 7 Remake again because I was in the mood after watching a speedrun of the original. So far, I'm still only at the parts I've played before; I'm aware of what happens, but have no personal experience of anything after chapter 8. I'll probably update again once I get to that point.

Also made it to Alfheim in God of War 4, which I was not expecting to happen as early as it did. I knew the game looked great (not that that's rare for Gen 8 games IMO), but seeing the other realms just elevated the game's art design. And it's still got all the good stuff that people smarter than me and who've played more of it than me have waxed lyrical about for the five years since it came out.

 

[mirbrownbread]

In the past two weeks I've finished the very first Zelda game and A Link to the Past, and was floored of how awesome they were (this was my very first time playing them!)
Yesterday I decided it's time for Ocarina of Time. Played like 45 mins of it so far and I can already tell it is a special title. Never had an N64 growing up, so I'm actually grateful for the Nintendo Online service that turns my SW Lite into a portable mini-classic console.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

In the past two weeks I've finished the very first Zelda game and A Link to the Past, and was floored of how awesome they were (this was my very first time playing them!)
Yesterday I decided it's time for Ocarina of Time. Played like 45 mins of it so far and I can already tell it is a special title. Never had an N64 growing up, so I'm actually grateful for the Nintendo Online service that turns my SW Lite into a portable mini-classic console.

The first time I played Ocarina to completion was in 2020, not long after I started being stuck inside for weeks at a time due to "personal reasons". It's not my favorite of the series, but it holds up surprisingly well. It's probably better on original hardware and not having to use an analog stick for digital inputs, but even so, it's absolutely worth it.

 

[Dalisclock]

In the past two weeks I've finished the very first Zelda game and A Link to the Past, and was floored of how awesome they were (this was my very first time playing them!)
Yesterday I decided it's time for Ocarina of Time. Played like 45 mins of it so far and I can already tell it is a special title. Never had an N64 growing up, so I'm actually grateful for the Nintendo Online service that turns my SW Lite into a portable mini-classic console.

I played the NES zeldas and LTTP as a kid but didn't get an N64 so I didn't play another Zelda game until like 2018 or something like that when I played OOT(the DS remake) and while it wasn't the greatest game of all time like it's sometimes made out to be, it's a very good game in it's own right. It does suffer from being an early 3d game and feeling a bit cramped compared to later games in the series are my major issues with it and honestly, that pretty much boils down to "Well, you had to be there in 1997".

 

[Xprimentyl]

Bully Scholarship Edition is messed up on Steam. I put it on my Steam Deck? Working well there. And so far, simple and fun. Better than GTA4 which feels like driving a tank.

Bully reminds me of the simpler times of gaming, when even established developers might spread their wings and risk applying their formula for success to something untested. Is it the greatest game? No, but it's really charming and fun being basically GTA in a boarding school setting. It's sad to think something like this is all but unheard of nowadays. *Looks around for Bully 2* Oh, that's right, Bully 2 wouldn't be GTA V v1.3.47.30. (Yes, I'm still salty GTA V managed to be released and re-released in three separated console generations without any concrete news of GTA VI, but gaming has long since stopped caring what I think, so whatever.)

 

[Bedinsis]

Bully reminds me of the simpler times of gaming, when even established developers might spread their wings and risk applying their formula for success to something untested. Is it the greatest game? No, but it's really charming and fun being basically GTA in a boarding school setting. It's sad to think something like this is all but unheard of nowadays. *Looks around for Bully 2* Oh, that's right, Bully 2 wouldn't be GTA V v1.3.47.30. (Yes, I'm still salty GTA V managed to be released and re-released in three separated console generations without any concrete news of GTA VI, but gaming has long since stopped caring what I think, so whatever.)

Didn't Rockstar also release a table tennis game?

Also, Ubisoft has been taking their Far Cry series and Assassin's Creed series to all sort of settings, using their established formula in a new setting, but the picture I've gotten is that the exercise has not been that appreciated.

 

[Xprimentyl]

Didn't Rockstar also release a table tennis game?

Also, Ubisoft has been taking their Far Cry series and Assassin's Creed series to all sort of settings, using their established formula in a new setting, but the picture I've gotten is that the exercise has not been that appreciated.

Let's not confuse "same game, different setting" with "new idea, similar formula." Assassins Creed hasn't effectively changed in over a decade. Far Cry has basically been iterations of Ubisoft's generic open world model since forever. At least Bully took the GTA format and applied it to a different feel from the ground up. I.e.: Assassins Creed #27 and Far Cry #13 aren't equivalent to a Bully where Rockstar removed everything save their name for a new IP to garner new interest.

 

[BrawlMan]

Final Vendetta (PS4) - I finally accomplished my Hard 1CC, No Death, All S-Ranks Arcade Run. I did this with Claire. Her having the fastest speed and the most combos helps a bunch. It's still no walk in the park, yet I am glad the deed has been accomplished.

Update: I managed to do all of that with Duke now. Managed to beat my high score too.