What are you currently playing?

[Old_Hunter_77]

Bought two games on sale on Steam: Tales of Arise and Afterimage

Both are anime as heck which I guess means I've let the few anime shows I watched in the past couple of years and Final Fantasy 7 remakes dull my aversion to the style enough.

I know the Tales series is super jRPG but I'm down for a big game with action after having played a small one. And Afterimage is a small game that I'll just keep on the back burner for now.

 

[Drathnoxis]

Think I'm done with TowerClimb. Finally managed to get past the lava level to the second floor of the ice level which has everybody's favorite ice annoyances (slippery floors, wind that blows you around, icicles falling on your head). Anyway, just as I was starting to climb up the wizard that steals your stuff appears. Well, I'm right near the bottom and he won't stop harassing you until you kill him or he hits you, so I drop back down and fight him, I hit him a couple of times but then he gets a shot on me and steals all my stuff... and that's it. I literally could not continue. He left me with two invulnerorbs and I used them both to item hop around overhangs and then I simply could not progress without either more items or some of the potions I'd been saving the entire game. So yeah, great game design, he might as well kill you.

Overall, I see why this one never really caught on and made it big. The platforming IS the game and it's awkward. You can get items, but you're more likely to kill yourself trying to get them or use them than if you just focused on avoiding enemies and climbing up as quickly as possible. The games I've done the best are ones where I had a spear and an inventory of junk for item hopping. Every single aspect of the game has little built in annoyances. You can get a sword, but you have to jump to swing it, leading you into accidentally jumping on spikes or off ledges or getting too close to enemies. There's a better sword, but I still found myself more likely to die with it than without. The range is also really short so you are far better off throwing a spear, except the spear also bounces off enemies when they die and can fall down, needing to be retrieved. Worse it acts as a platform, which is something that you will never, EVER, want to use it as, but means that picking it back up is 5x more difficult that it needs to be. The boomerang is a cool weapon, but can kill you if it picks up the wrong item or in the wrong way. I thought I might use it to pull an item out of lava, and after about a minute of trying to throw it at the correct angle I succeeded... and splashed myself with lava and died. Fantastic. Your basic climbing speed is absurdly slow and it takes rare items to speed it up. There are boots that make you move faster, but the super rare ones make you move too fast and mess up your jumps. Speaking of messing up jumps, it's annoyingly easy to waste your double jumps, since you can jump when you are at the top of a ledge you can jump for free, but just a little lower and it uses the double jump for nothing. Crafting is almost completely useless. It's completely random when the guy shows up so 80% of the time you won't have the items you need, or the money you need, or you're being chased by lava so you can't stop to sort through your inventory and just have to pass him by. Also, there are times when traps or enemies are covered up by foreground decorations or just offscreen. It's always fun to drop onto ground you thought was safe only to realize that there were actually almost invisible spikes behind that bush or a worm or something, or to be climbing up a one square passage only to find that there is a rat on the top who is going to drop on you before you can move out of the way.

The worst thing of all is that the game is plain unbeatable without items. There are segments that are uncrossable without a double jump and you can only do this with an item. This means that you can easily be soft locked the second you run out of items. Anyway, I just don't want to spend another hour trudging through all the early levels to get another shot at what comes next.

@NerfedFalcon did you actually beat this game?

 

[Bartholen]

21 hours into Mass Effect 2 Legendary, but I could have sworn it was like twice that amount. Certainly feels like it. This is one big-ass game despite the relatively short length for an RPG. I think it comes down to its streamlined, fat-free design: there's no inventory management, no consumables, no picking up new gear, and leveling up is stripped down to bare bones. And frankly I prefer that for an action RPG. In "more true" RPGs like Dragon Age Origins or Baldur's Gate 3 a ton of time is spent on inventory management, leveling up and speccing builds. And ME2 cuts all that fat out, focusing on the pure gameplay experience alone.

It's remarkable how much mileage the game gets out of its relatively limited selection of fairly small locations. Unlike in ME2, the economy is balanced extremely well, and there's reasons to revisit old locations multiple times. The extensive NPC background chatter breathes so much life and character into what in ME1 were mostly static and empty environments. The dialogue's all razor sharp. This is top Bioware, and easily the best game in the series.

 

[meiam]

Bought two games on sale on Steam: Tales of Arise and Afterimage

Both are anime as heck which I guess means I've let the few anime shows I watched in the past couple of years and Final Fantasy 7 remakes dull my aversion to the style enough.

I know the Tales series is super jRPG but I'm down for a big game with action after having played a small one. And Afterimage is a small game that I'll just keep on the back burner for now.

Arise is pretty so-so as far as tales go, I'd do bezeria instead, or wait for the heavily rumoured remaster of grace suppose to come out soon.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

Think I'm done with TowerClimb.

did you actually beat this game?

I'm flattered you think so highly of my abilities, but no. I didn't recommend it because I'd beaten it, and honestly I don't beat a lot of games; I recommended it because I thought you'd enjoy it based on my read of you.

 

[Drathnoxis]

I'm flattered you think so highly of my abilities, but no. I didn't recommend it because I'd beaten it, and honestly I don't beat a lot of games; I recommended it because I thought you'd enjoy it based on my read of you.

Ah I see. It definitely is in my wheelhouse, you weren't wrong to recommend it. Good lord is it punishing, though. It's absurd the developers thought that being touched with a pixel of lava is a fault worthy of instant game over regardless of revive potions. (Ok, I admit I've played a bit more and just died in The Heart again to a pixel of lava after a nearly flawless run.)

 

[meiam]

Playing deadlock. It's... okay I guess? Honestly if it wasn't linked to valve I don't think it would be getting much traction. It's not bad but doesn't really do anything special either and fall into a lot of the pitfall of both MOBA and hero shooter that have been smoothed out by other games since.

Theres a tons of item so you have to memorize those, with some being key to making some character work. The map has a lot of verticallity but its also really confusingly laid out so you get lost a lot. Its beta so there's a tons of QoL stuff that aren't in the game.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Really enjoying Crypt Custodian. It's not hard at all but the game knows how to keep you on your toes with hordes and the general bullet hell-ness of boss fights. A lot of the challenges are conditioned around not taking any damage, and there's no way of healing outside of visiting a checkpoint. So any damage you take is there for keeps until you die or reach a checkpoint. You're basically dancing around big glowing arrows and neon danger signs the whole game, avoiding incoming attacks while whacking enemies with your broom. Combat never evolves much beyond that but it's a fun, satisfying loop. Whacking enemies, rocks, garbage piles with the broom gives a satisfying crunch. The way currency funnels in and makes a plinking noise is addictive.

Like every review's pointed out, the game has a charm system like Hollow Knight's where you equip and unequip upgrades based on how many skill points you have, and doubles for a very effective sense of progression. Less exciting are the special abilities. You can equip one, and you basically get the best one from the get-go. Never felt the need to swap it.

Some notes:

* The music is very charming and evocative... the loops are also rather short, and hearing them restart so bluntly takes me out of it.

* There's an awkward second-long delay whenever you open the map of teleport that makes it look like the game's about to freeze or crash.

* Unrelated, but the game did crash once on me, not sure why.

* Here's a weird one, but the geography of the areas isn't very interesting. The game makes very wise use of palettes and effects and background and theming... but in the end it's always just a bunch of floating platforms connected by other floating platforms.

* Not losing anything upon death and being able to fast travel to any checkpoint from anywhere in the map is some first class flight experience.

 

[Trunkage]

Sunless Skies

I've been enjoying this more than the predecessor. It gives far more direction about what to do. I remembered in Seas just forgetting what I'm meant to be doing to finish basic quests. This sometimes happens here but I found I just finished the quest I knew, retired and did them on future captains. The passing on inheritance system is way better/ less punishing and it doesn't feel like I'm spending hours to get back to where I was before

The time between ports is reduced and supplies aren't as tight. Which can be a shame. It does allow me to just strike our and try and discover new areas as you are less likely to get caught unsupported. The old plain background is gone and replaced with gorgeous vistas that adds to the flavour. The Tower of Chimes and the Dying Sun were worthwhile detours. I feel like I can effect this world more unlike the last one where I pretty much only changed things by retiring... which mostly just reset everything

They didn't get the same Chthulu esque feeling of Seas. There's nothing as outlandish as bats stealing a whole city. But it was easier to understand what was actually going on. Eg. I didnt recall the Iron Kingdom was run by demons. It was just a cheap fuel port for me. I liked the concept of being antedeceased and empheria but changing between the states was annoying and wasteful. Ripping off your face to changes to Yoked doesn't make sense as empheria already has you dead

Anyway, spent a long time on this. I probably will again over the years

9/10

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

Arise is pretty so-so as far as tales go, I'd do bezeria instead, or wait for the heavily rumoured remaster of grace suppose to come out soon.

Well too late I already started. I can see it being so-so but that's ok- I was in the mood for some anime b.s. and this is delivering.

> Really enjoying Crypt Custodian. It's not hard at all but the game knows how to keep you on your toes with hordes and the general bullet hell-ness of boss fights.

Yeah I'd say after beating it, including post-game, that it's relative ease is both its strength and weakness. Certainly more the former so that I actually finished it but the downside is without that kick-you-in-the-ass challenge it's not going to stick in my brain the way other games do.

 

[Drathnoxis]

Finished The Hex and ABZU, both short games.

The Hex was pretty good. From the creator of Pony Island, it was the game he made before Inscryption. Pretty much more of that meta style of story telling he likes to explore. He plays around with a bunch of different game mechanics, but it's pretty much all window dressing. It was fun enough, though, but not as good as Inscryption.

ABZU was made by some of the people that worked on Journey, and it's trying to be Journey but underwater. It's not as good as Journey. Honestly, I didn't really get what the goal was or what we accomplished, even at the end. I don't know why fish came out of the little coral rings either. I get the sense that the whole point was just to be blown away by the designers amazing artistry, reinforced by the 'meditation statues' where you just sit and watch the various fish models swim around and eat each other and stuff. I will admit, some of the environments were pretty nice, but the models were a little lacking. The swimming controls and camera were a little clunky at times too. There were also some Flower-esque segments where you swim along in a current and touch groups of fish, but they don't join you and add to your school so it's not as good as Flower. I don't know, Journey just had something special that made it work despite being so minimalist, and ABZU lacks it. I thought it was a little boring.

 

[hanselthecaretaker2]

Finished The Hex and ABZU, both short games.

The Hex was pretty good. From the creator of Pony Island, it was the game he made before Inscryption. Pretty much more of that meta style of story telling he likes to explore. He plays around with a bunch of different game mechanics, but it's pretty much all window dressing. It was fun enough, though, but not as good as Inscryption.

ABZU was made by some of the people that worked on Journey, and it's trying to be Journey but underwater. It's not as good as Journey. Honestly, I didn't really get what the goal was or what we accomplished, even at the end. I don't know why fish came out of the little coral rings either. I get the sense that the whole point was just to be blown away by the designers amazing artistry, reinforced by the 'meditation statues' where you just sit and watch the various fish models swim around and eat each other and stuff. I will admit, some of the environments were pretty nice, but the models were a little lacking. The swimming controls and camera were a little clunky at times too. There were also some Flower-esque segments where you swim along in a current and touch groups of fish, but they don't join you and add to your school so it's not as good as Flower. I don't know, Journey just had something special that made it work despite being so minimalist, and ABZU lacks it. I thought it was a little boring.

In a way I liked ABZU more, because it felt like a uniquely appropriate take on water levels. Nothing frustrating about it IMO, and it was rather zen like it its approach to design. The swirling schools of fish were mesmerizing. I felt like Journey had a better, more satisfying finale but overall I’d rather play ABZU if the aim was to relax.

 

[Drathnoxis]

Bloody TowerClimb is bloody impossible! Finally got back to the ruins after hours of attempts. This level is just truly awful. You absolutely need jump potions for the first time in the game because the level is filled with huge gaps and you will quickly run out of items for hopping. I should really just give up, and I keep telling myself I will, but darn it I need to win!

 

[Bob_McMillan]

Tried to enjoy a MHW session with my girlfriend today, but the rain is so bad and so the connection was unstable. My fault for playing in bad weather, but man... MHW's multiplayer system feels ANCIENT. I had to drop out of the quest twice and join again, which for some reason the game reads as 3 different people joining the quest. So not only did I NOT get any quest rewards, my girlfriend's reward money was split into 4 instead of two.

I really, really hope Wilds improves on all this. Monster Hunter is such a fun multiplayer game, it sucks that a game as great as World is held back by it.

 

[Drathnoxis]

I did it. I beat TowerClimb. I got to the top of the tower survived the sorceress and floated off into the sky. Don't talk to me about chapter 2. It doesn't exist.

 

[Bedinsis]

I started a little run in Crusader Kings II. And lost track of the hours in a highly irresponsive manner.

I started as a double county duke in Northumbria, vassal to the king of England, with a session I was planning to eventually take maybe a county or two from pagan Scotland or something from my fellow English lords, while simultaneously maximizing the tech of Northumbria and the buildings within the county. I also wanted to befriend my liege lord just in case, and a few carousing parties with him and other fellow lords later he was my best buddy and when I requested a territory (after he had won a war with Scotland) he gave me the Hebrides. I was among the weakest in the realm, but still in a decent enough position.

Then the king of England died, and I was greatly surprised that the other lord had all voted that I should be the next king of England. Apparently the other guys liked me enough, since I soon after could make England primogeniture, i.e. my oldest child would inherit the throne and nobody interjected. I then conquered Scotland and made that also primogeniture.

My guy was getting old and he had four children: one older boy, two younger twins, one Content one Ambitious, and a genius fourth one. A good arrangement since Scotland allowed female heritage while England did not, so the older boy, i.e. me would get everything. Which was all fine and dandy until the older one died with only a daughter, aka the future queen of the Scots, not me. Then my guy died and I got to play as the Content twin.

At this point I figured that even though it's a sin and would risk me becoming a kinslayer, my niece the queen was just a wee baby and it would unite the realms anew, so I took a gamble and assassinated her, but alas I was found out. Soon afterwards my subjects revealed that it was my father's charisma that had made him king of England and they didn't care for me, since one of them had me excommunicated, and soon a faction with 240 % of my strength formed to make my brother the new king. I knelt publicly in front of the pope himself, begging him to lift my excommunication. It took me to a negative Prestige count but His Holiness accepted. It did not however stop the faction from firing, and a short war later I had lost the throne of England. Oh, and another subject had me excommunicated anew.

I was now only the king of Scotland and some territories in England when another faction to have me replaced with my child formed which had a higher strength than the forces I could muster, and they eventually succeeded, so I was now playing an infant with my genius uncle as my regent, an uncle that would become the king of Scotland should I die so I was really nervous that I would be assassinated, and I even encountered one time where someone tried to do that, it turned out to be him. Meanwhile in England my uncle the ambitious twin was having trouble keeping his subjects under wraps and he was eventually disposed by an older relative. And I could not pick my council based on who had the best stats; everybody hated me so it was only viable to keep the important people in the roles, and I had basically no army nor any income.

At this point the Vikings decided to raid through all my provinces and I was unable to do anything other than seeing how his army somehow grew while plundering my lands.

Then the duke of Jylland, Denmark, announced a prepared invasion for the throne of Scotland. He had twice as large army as I could muster.

"Of course he would." I thought, and went to bed since it was 3 a.m., thinking I should abandon this game completely. But I returned again, the day after, preparing for my inevitable loss.

But now the fortune turned. The Christian lords of Ireland all pledged their troops in defending my lands, and using the strategy of letting a lot of territory fall and thereby depleting the Danish forces of men, while also having invited the best commanders I could find to lead the armies and receiving a gift from the Pope since I was defending from heathens, I eventually managed to win that invasion. Then the king of England died childless and I got that throne as well. And could form the kingdom of Wales since the English lords had conquered enough lands.

This was a stable enough situation that I started planning for the future and educated all my children as Jews (I wanted to try how that would play out). I currently am playing as one of those Jewish children and honestly am surprised over how little my subjects seem to mind. There has only been one peasant revolt otherwise things have gone swimmingly.

That has been my run. And my takeaway from this would be: "Kinslaying: not even once".

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Well too late I already started. I can see it being so-so but that's ok- I was in the mood for some anime b.s. and this is delivering.

> Really enjoying Crypt Custodian. It's not hard at all but the game knows how to keep you on your toes with hordes and the general bullet hell-ness of boss fights.

Yeah I'd say after beating it, including post-game, that it's relative ease is both its strength and weakness. Certainly more the former so that I actually finished it but the downside is without that kick-you-in-the-ass challenge it's not going to stick in my brain the way other games do.

Playing on Normal I've found the most challenging parts to be dealing with curses and the hitless battle rooms. At least until I figured with curses you can just fast travel to the first areas of the game and whack the requisite 10-15 enemies without much of a hassle. If I were the dev I'd disable fast travel while cursed. I'd also implement an option to go back to the curse spot if you fail - make retrying easier. The hitless battle rooms let you retry instantly, and since my build is based on never getting hit anyway it's not that much of a challenge.

Some of the bosses are definitely the highlight in terms of difficulty, but it usually boils down to getting a read on all their moves and patterns. You're bound to become a powerhouse simply because there's no limit to how many upgrade points you can earn, so halfway through the game I'm equipping every upgrade I have. No tactical tradeoffs like in Hollow Knight, which has a limited number of charm notches.

The boss rush mode is probably going to be a pain, if I bother with it. Getting S+ on everything means never getting hit and finishing the fight in mere seconds, and at present I don't see a build capable of pulling that.

 

[Bartholen]

Finished ME2's Suicide Mission and the "end credits teaser" aka the Arrival DLC. Lost only one crewmember (Kasumi), but I'm kinda confused as to what the game wanted of me for her not to die. I actually restarted the mission two different times because each time the person I sent into the vents died. I sent every "optimal" choice in after the other: first Legion, then Tali, then Kasumi, and they all died. I didn't want to go into ME3 without Legion or Tali, so Kasumi took the brunt. All their loyalty missions were completed, and the wiki showed that those three were supposed to be perfect choices, so in the end I could only shrug and wonder if there's something wrong with the game.

The Arrival DLC got pretty rough reviews at the time of release, but as a final punctuation mark and a lead-in to ME3 it works perfectly fine. The narrower scope of it being a solo mission (though with some seriously wonky writing) helps tighten Shepard's personal connection to the Reapers, as well as allowing for a bit more intense mission. I also noticed that the music is weirdly really good. It captures the hectic, desperate intensity the DLC is supposed to convey absolutely perfectly, and as far as I could tell most of it was unique to the DLC.

 

[Summerstorm]

I started a little run in Crusader Kings II. And lost track of the hours in a highly irresponsive manner.

I started as a double county duke in Northumbria, vassal to the king of England, with a session I was planning to eventually take maybe a county or two from pagan Scotland or something from my fellow English lords, while simultaneously maximizing the tech of Northumbria and the buildings within the county. I also wanted to befriend my liege lord just in case, and a few carousing parties with him and other fellow lords later he was my best buddy and when I requested a territory (after he had won a war with Scotland) he gave me the Hebrides. I was among the weakest in the realm, but still in a decent enough position.

Then the king of England died, and I was greatly surprised that the other lord had all voted that I should be the next lord of England. Apparently the other guys liked me enough, since I soon after could make England primogeniture, i.e. my oldest child would inherit the throne and nobody interjected. I then conquered Scotland and made that also primogeniture.

My guy was getting old and he had four children: one older boy, two younger twins, one Content one Ambitious, and a genius fourth one. A good arrangement since Scotland allowed female heritage while England did not, so the older boy, i.e. me would get everything. Which was all fine and dandy until the older one died with only a daughter, aka the future queen of the Scots, not me. Then my guy died and I got to play as the Content twin.

At this point I figured that even though it's a sin and would risk me becoming a kinslayer, my niece the queen was just a wee baby and it would unite the realms anew, so I took a gamble and assassinated her, but alas I was found out. Soon afterwards my subjects revealed that it was my father's charisma that had made him king of England and they didn't care for me, since one of them had me excommunicated, and soon a faction with 240 % of my strength formed to make my brother the new king. I knelt publicly in front of the pope himself, begging him to lift my excommunication. It took me to a negative Prestige count but His Holiness accepted. It did not however stop the faction from firing, and a short war later I had lost the throne of England. Oh, and another subject had had me excommunicated anew.

I was now only the king of Scotland and some territories in England when another faction to have me replaced with my child formed which had a higher strength than the forces I could muster, and they eventually succeeded, so I was now playing an infant with my genius uncle as my regent, an uncle that would become the king of Scotland should I die so I was really nervous that I would be assassinated, and I even encountered one time where someone tried to do that, it turned out to be him. Meanwhile in England my uncle the ambitious twin was having trouble keeping his subjects under wraps and he was eventually disposed by an older relative. And I could not pick my council based on who had the best stats; everybody hated me so it was only viable to keep the important people in the roles, and I had basically no army nor any income.

At this point the Vikings decided to raid through all my provinces and I was unable to do anything other than seeing how his army somehow grew while plundering my lands.

Then the duke of Jylland, Denmark, announced a prepared invasion for the throne of Scotland. He had twice as large army as I could muster.

"Of course he would." I thought, and went to bed since it was 3 a.m., thinking I should abandon this game completely. But I returned again, the day after, preparing for my inevitable loss.

But now the fortune turned. The Christian lord of Ireland all pledged their troops in defending my lands, and using the strategy of letting a lot of territory fall and thereby depleting the Danish forces of men, while also having invited the best commanders I could find to lead the armies and receiving a gift from the Pope since I was defending from heathens, I eventually managed to win that invasion. Then the king of England died childless and I got that throne as well. And could form the kingdom of Wales since the English lords has conquered enough lands.

This was a stable enough situation that I started planning for the future and educated all my children as Jews (I wanted to try how that would play out). I currently am playing as one of those Jewish children and honestly am surprised over how little my subjects seem to mind. There has only been one peasant revolt otherwise things have gone swimmingly.

That has been my run. And my takeaway from this would be: "Kinslaying: not even once".

Hehe, nice ( I love the accidental becoming the King of England because of just being a charismatic dude in a land with scandinavian elective)

I played my CK III Session a bit further: Started as a Taoistic Ruler of Sardegne (Sardinia)
And played defensively, all in on developement for a hundred years or so (Fending of multiple attempts at "holy-waring" from the Moslems and Christians)

I then went into "We bring you peace... BY FORCE"-Mode and surprise annexed Romagne (And with that Rome), driving the pope into exile. I also took a part of France, Spain, North Africa from the Moslems and Sicilia from the Greek Empire.

After i died, this empire was fractured (as planed) between my numerous children. A while after that the Christians "unlocked" crusades and i thought my ass was done, but we blitzkrieged the announced crusade for the "Freeing of Rome" before most participants even arrived in italy by capturing the Italian King and Family in his capital. (So we won the crusades while being 4:1 in army size) The next 80 years no new crusades were declared.

So I am still lagging behind in converting the centers of the mediterranen into my utopia, but still my family is a force to be reckoned with. (With the Sardegne silver-mines, absurd high development (Nearing Rome/Constantinople-Level) i generate a shit-ton of taxes while still maintaining a super-high quality men-at-arms army (2 Specialized Heavy Cavalry stationed in my primary Domains are running at, i think 285% effectiveness, Size 12) Also by Family tradition and Culture traditions my knights are also rolling at a pretty high effectiveness + i have a sponsored an holy order to help out in religious wars (which most wars are, hehe).

My Army is so good, i have slaughtered the French Army (Mostly Levy) at a 6500 to their 14000 men, while losing about... 400 or so? In this phase i just declare small wars for claims of my vassals, to creep up into all directions. No big subjugations for two generations or so. Still, time is running out and i have not pacified europe to my peaceful ways yet, hehe.


Eh back from that: I have started to play Kingdom Come: Deliverance - Saw a trailer for the second part and remembered not having ended the first one. Phew, lots of cool ideas... slightly janky, incomplete game though (Needs more complexity in the interactions, better dialogue, better control of the states, better pacing in the quests. But man, it is a really beautiful, game, with a clear identity and interesting mechanics.

Let's see if i can play it till the end this time (Last time i didn't broke out of the flow of the main quests and was pretty under leveled for it after a while which led to frustrations.)

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

I'm about 1/3 of the way into Tales of Arise (I estimate because there are 5 "lords"/worlds to deal with and I defeated 2, and presumably there will be a final section after the 5th lord).

Basically it's FF16 but... faster. By which I mean the dialogue and quests. It is very much- talk to NPC's, go kill thing, bog standard RPG stuff. Cut scenes are pretty decent for this genre. Plot is by-the-numbers- I saw a lot of complaints about this in the Steam reviews but, my dudes- what do you expect from this stuff? Granted I could be missing something special from the earlier entries but I feel I'm not because otherwise the series would be more famous outside of weebs/gamers. It would be Final Fantasy.

Of course the combat is simpler than FF16 but for me, the dude that plays on Normal difficulty and is interested in getting through the story, it's the same rhythm- action but you also control a party. Smash the buttons until you get prompts to do anime stuff.

There are three options for how automated the party is and so far I've had no interest in changing it, and then you can blame me when I get bored by combat I guess. Default is "semi auto" where you control main emo dude with sword and other party members do their own thing (there are "strategy" settings to guide them). I struggle with games where there's too much to see/do so I'll never try the "manual" type mode where you have to switch between all the characters yourself. And the full auto is probably like turning it into a idle/movie game which seems pointless.

Though the latter is interesting- if there is a mode where you basically skip the actually gameplay that suggests the devs are really confident in their story telling. And story isn't bad at all- but it's really nothing special, it's like Generic Anime 101. Ultimately it's why I can never be a huge fan of these games, and that includes Final Fantasy- they feel like a recipe with EVERY INGREDIENT and that is never the best dish.
There is even "cooking" as a lame mechanic because of course there is.