General Video Game Thread

[Thenomain]

@Ghost

I would play any video game that had me feeling like Alan Rickman. A living Alan Rickman, I should be clear.

[Tempest]

The 'start' of Divinity 2 pretty much did the complete opposite of hook me.

It seems awful.

Got off the boat, walking around this island pointlessly to find these less than interesting party members.

And it all just feels dull.

I loved the first one, but idk. Will go back to 2 at some point. I'm sure it picks up, but back to re-running through Mass Effect for now.

ETA : Annoying thing, having to hold down alt to see interactables. And I'm pretty sure doing it in D:OS1 showed containers (chests, etc), didn't it? It does not seem to show containers in 2.

Honestly amazing how annoying such a small thing is.

[Tempest]

@Insomnia said in General Video Game Thread:

@Jaded said in General Video Game Thread:

@Arkandel
If you like JRPGs Trails in the Sky is damn good.

The entire Legend of Heroes series is good. The most recent one out on Steam is Trails of Cold Steel, with 2 on the way soon and 3 in development. Cold Steel is the 11th game in the series, although they can all be played separately, or within their own trilogies. There's a couple of Legends of Heroes games that haven't made it over here though.

Trails of Cold Steel Is also new, but not; came out on Steam in August, but was originally a 360 and PS3 game. It's a good port though.

Be prepared if you pick up any of the Legends of Heroes though to spend a LOT of time in game (main story of Cold Steel and extras clocks in at 84.5 hours, completionist says 111 hours), and lots of anime cut scenes.

Trails of Cold Steel is definitely fun if you like JRPGs. It's very Persona 4-ish (or was 3 the one where you did 'school stuff' between Persona-stuff. I forget).

Recently played through about half of it (if it's actually 85 hours maybe uhh less than half. Was at the visit to the Great Plains place) before my attention drifted. Kind of a recurring thing with me when it comes to video games, nothing against the game itself. The only minor complaint I have was the constant inability to select your party. It made sense in the story, but still bleh.

I got the previous 'trilogy' of Legend of Heroes too, but haven't touched that yet.

[Tempest]

On the topic of JRPGs, Tales of Berseria has been surprisingly amazing. Like a flashback to the bevy of anime-y RPGs from the PS2 days (not to say it's dated, it's just /so/ reminiscent of those days).

The controls are atrocious on mouse+kb though, just a warning. (Not unplayable, but it'll probably feel awkward.)

Might have to pick up Zestiria down the road and give it a whirl too. Anybody have comments on how Zestiria compares to Berseria?

[Insomnia]

@Tempest The controls are better with a controller. Both are great games, but I like Zestria maybe a little bit more, but I played it before Berseria.

[Tempest]

Got a PS2 Emulator to work (I am not computer savvy, and prior attempts have failed), and let me tell you, it's like christmas.

[deadculture]

@tempest said in General Video Game Thread:

Got a PS2 Emulator to work (I am not computer savvy, and prior attempts have failed), and let me tell you, it's like christmas.

Yeah, once you get it right, you get it right. And then you can play any fucking thing you want in it. Still waiting for a NDS emulator that doesn't suck. I need to finish The World Ends With You.

[Ganymede]

I should've been playing Horizon Zero Dawn a long time ago.

[Jaded]

Let's talk ME: Shadow of War.

The first thing I can say is that the game is not worth its current price point. Unless you are a hardcore fan of the franchise I would recommend waiting until it hits the $25-$35 dollar mark on sales or discounts available through Steam or it gets thrown into a bundle.

For gameplay. The combat is the same as the first game with a few different weapons variations thrown in. Such as being able to replace your bow with thrown hammers. About 90% of the combat animations and finishers were copy pasted from the first game. So the entire process of playing the game will be very familiar. There was no innovation to the combat system or improvements that stood out to me. Playing with a keyboard and mouse is just as easy as using a controller - I think KB+M is easier actually, and the combat system still looks good to watch.

So what is different besides story?

You pick up actual gear in the game now to equip that to improve your baseline stats. But it is not a full inventory system limiting you to your weapons and then armor and a cloak. There was some nice development here though as each new piece of gear does modify the actual appearance of your avatar which was lacking in the first game outside of full skin changes.

The Nemesis system has tiered level captains and warchiefs that give you variations in that gear. So following the WoW style of quality you have white through orange quality equipment with legendary being blue. Upper quality equipment will unlock further special abilities for doing specific things while using that equipment. The better quality warchief or captain you kill the better the loot - and of course the more abilities they have and harder they are to kill.

There are also more skills for more character customization to choose from and you still have options to select perks for those skills. This means that each skill line has a primary skill tier and then attached to that teir are modifier skills that improve that primary skill in some way. And this seems to be the only game innovation that is not meant to support the microtransaction system.

So microtransactions. In the world you will pick up money from some defeated orcs or find treasures worth a lot of it. You trade this in for silver level loot boxes or warchests at a merchant you can access at any time. In the silver chests are equipment upgrades and in the warchests are allies that you get - orcs that work for you and you can call upon to assist you in-game. Gold and Mithril chests are rarer chests that you might get lucky enough to get in the game but you can not buy them with the in-game money you find. Naturally the gold chests hold better stuff, the mithril chests even better than that.

Now. You do not have to buy the in-game currency with actual money; you can farm up the coins to buy silver chests and the basic war chests but it is a very slow and tedious process with some drops giving you 5 coins and some giving you 50, those amounts will vary, but those chests cost 1500 coins. The gold and mithril chests take around 200 gold coins which are different from the in-game money easily found. Or you can buy gold coins with your actual money to get the best loot and allies that you can possibly have throughout the game.

From the 10 hours I've put in, it really does feel like that as the game goes on and it gets more difficult it might become more and more necessary to grind legendary captains and warchiefs for a chance at higher tier chests. Or to get the in-game currency for better and better gear and bodyguards. Moreso if you play this game on the hardest difficulties.

For the rest of the game:
The sound quality is to be expected with a lot of Middle Earth style orchestral music and tracks, but none that get quite as repetitive as the Witcher 3 did with the moaning wail music. All of the orcs in the Nemesis system have pretty good personalities and there was a lot of humor in dialogue written there - although I did think a few times 'oh god he's doing a monologue' before killing him and sometimes at death too. I really did appreciate the level of development that went in to making the orcs feel and look different from one another as far as the captains and the warchiefs were concerned.

So overall the game is not that different from Shadows of Mordor. If you like that game you already know what to expect going in. Because I am not a fan of how invasive this microtransaction system is and the looming prospect of the game being developed to be grindy to support it - I doubt this is a game I will finish.

[Insomnia]

@jaded Also the real ending is pretty much behind a paywall, as you need Legendary orcs to complete it and while you could grind it out, it is very much a grind without the boxes.

ALSO: The PC version clocks in at 100 Gigs... so there's that.

[Jaded]

@insomnia
I was told by others that it takes about $250 in purchases to buy enough loot boxes to get the legendary orcs needed to get the real ending. But since that is all speculation and nothing that I could verify myself, I did not want to include it since it was not part of my own experience.

[Tempest]

@insomnia said in General Video Game Thread:

ALSO: The PC version clocks in at 100 Gigs... so there's that.

ETA : I despise, fucking despise, the notion of pay-to-play games that then also have loot boxes or something of the sort as a thing.

F2P with in-game purchases, or sell me a fucking video game. DLC is tolerable when it's real content that adds 10+ hours of gameplay or something. But stuff like loot boxes in a game I already paid for will flat out turn me off from a company forever more. You don't get to be a greedy fuck and double dip in my pocket.

[Insomnia]

@jaded Oh I get that, but hiding the true ending behind a paywall is something people should know about when considering a game too.

You can get it down to 65 Gigs if you opt out of 4k resolution, but you can't do that until after the download has started. That's still bigger than a lot of releases.

(It's only 36 Gigs on PS4... WTF?

[Jaded]

@insomnia
Well I would hope how invasive the microtransaction system would disqualify on its own but I understand some people do not mind that. Everyone should have Tempest's reaction to $60 games with a pay to play system built into it, imo.

[Lithium]

I won't play a game with microtransactions unless it's a f2p game (which is something of a joke, it's never truly free, they have to make money somehow). I would prefer to pay my money once and be done with them.

I don't mind spending money for DLC if it is actual /content/. In that respect I try to justify game purchases with how much time it will entertain me, a movie costs so much money, if the DLC can't entertain me for at least as long as a decent movie for the same price, not worth getting.

[SG]

I just wrapped up Shadowrun Hong Kong. I have to say I've really enjoyed this series. SR Returns was probably the low point, but it was still really good. Dragonfall and HongKong had really interesting stories that kept me invested, and some of the side quests were pretty funny.

As a GM, though, I don't understand how issuing frag grenades to building security makes any sense. The damage they must do to furniture and equipment is nuts.

[Arkandel]

@lithium I just hate pay to win. That's all.

If you're f2p fine, but let free players just take longer to get wherever. Anything more than that and they lost me.

[Jaded]

@sg
The replacement of equipment and wage slaves is cheaper than replacing whatever it is that the security people armed with frag grenades might be protecting, in many cases.

[Tempest]

I am genuinely saddened by the fact that more of the Super Robot Taisen games haven't been translated to english.

I played a ps1 years ago that had been shoddily patched to English (and it had stuff like characters from Gundam/etc) and it was amazing. Played a couple of the Gameboy Advance ones too, IIRC.

But then I go through PS2 roms and I see there's like twenty of these games and they're all Japanese-only.

[SG]

@jaded I'm tempted to try a Flashbang/shock baton runthrough just to see if it's possible to shadowrun without killing anyone.