Who decided on the art direction for Square Enix's Octopath Traveler/Triangle Strategy division?? “Games with sprite art are visually appealing because their presentation is abstract and simple… so what if we made everything fake-pixelated on purpose, but also threw in a ton of bloom lighting and effects that make the onscreen action difficult to read???”
Fortunately not wanting the game's art direction to feel left behind, the game mechanics, narrative, OST and character design also appear to be an overproduced Greatest Hits cover album of tactical RPG classics. I’m always starved for this kind of game, but am I starved enough to sink time and money into a game _this_ devoid of an identity?? Prrrrrobably not
Speaking of niche genres I'm starved for, I so badly want a fresh “immersive sim” game that I picked up BioShock 2 for Switch despite finding the first game to be a pinnacle of overhyped mediocrity. I heard the sequel (2, not Infinite) is secretly kinda better in every way, and so far I have to say… that’s true?? Like there are all these little improvements in the level design (slightly streamlined, with more recognizable landmarks and mechanically coherent tasks/combat zones), weapons (the game gives you less of them less quickly, and they feel a little more functionally distinct), and writing (introducing an equal and opposite ideologue to Andrew Ryan makes for a more interesting backstory than his Randtopia collapsing because he was unable to control the black market for magical sea slug heroin). It’s still fairly mindless, a massive dumbing down of the “immersive sim” genre, and “balanced” around the Vita-Chamber - one of the worst and laziest game mechanics of all time - but it is definitely an improvement over the first game. I guess maybe Ken Levine just kinda… sucks as a game designer?
@2501#18695 I have a hard time with that particular look as well. Will admit to being a little bummed that the suikoden successor game went that route. I don‘t like the visual sense of playing with miniature toys - really disliked that link’s awakening remake for same reason - everything just feels frivolous and disposable imo
i've been playing the demo of bravely default ii today and while i find the battle system fun and the towns beautiful, everything else seems….off to me. i might wait for it to go on sale in a few years before i give it a shot
I played some Psycho Dream on the Switch virtual console this weekend. it feels like an NES game in not a good way, but pretty cool, good name, some really nasty looking SNES enemies, scary boss music. also it has unlimited continues with checkpoints which is nice
@tapevulture#18853 Very cool! I was kinda playing the same games as you! I stopped playing FFX around 2003 and tried getting into it again and restarting over the years until last summer, where I got finally further than 10 hours (made it to 40+ hours!)
Also, if you are playing Streets of Rage 3 on the Sega Genesis Classics collection for Switch, you can actually change it to the Japanese version, Bare Knuckle 3, which is more accessible because its supposedly easier. I heard the US localization increased enemies's HP and stuff and just made the gameplay more frustrating somehow!
And your son wanting you to play DKC2 reminds me as a little kid, watching my older brother play. Great times. That game has some fantastic tracks. He somehow got through all the stages without knowing the mechanics of certain stages (like, the steam in that balloon ride stage elevates the balloon. He somehow finished those stages without knowing that's what the steam did, and in web woods, he didn't know you can control the direction and when to make the web become flat, he just tapped the A button furiously and made a super long bridge with all the webs adjacent to each other, so that stage took like an hour to beat back then lol)
i'm emulating SOR3 because for some reason I feel like many of the games Genesis Classics collection for the Switch have input lag. Sonic 2 DEFINITELY has input lag. a lot of remasters for the switch seem to. the FF VIII and IX ports do, for example. i'll check out BK3 instead. i always play as blaze and her red outfit is cooler anyway
re: DKC3, yeah it's weird to think about how your tolerance for difficulty was so much higher as a kid, like that's nuts to think he cleared that balloon stage, which i finished recently, without understanding the steam columns. my main complaint with it is that the stages are very long and kind of just too hard for me to enjoy these days. some of the mechanics don't make sense to me. i blew through several lives trying to kill the weird ghost enemies that throw bees and barrels and stuff with the rhino; after a while i'm like ok i guess you just can't kill them?? i've recently became ok with save stating so that's made it more enjoyable
@tapevulture#18917 I think the Genesis Classics Collection for Switch is best for the RPGs. I never tried Sonic 2 on there, but I really like the fast forward button to fastgrind on Phantasy Star II, Shining in the Darkness, and even speeding up the animations on Shining Force. I also abuse the rewind feature sometimes on the beat em ups so I always walk around with full health.
Stages being long, hmm. Donkey Kong is enjoyable for me to play because of the pressing Y Rolling feature, it makes it faster if you roll everywhere, rolling off the edge of a cliff or something to gain more jumping distance. It's very silky smooth. It's a lot different than Mario and Sonic games because of that. There's also the feature where you can have your tag team buddy Diddy or Dixie jump on your shoulders by pressing A and you can throw him/her on enemies. I think you can kill the ghosts throwing stuff at you this way too though I think when I played it I just ran past them. You can even kill the macho enemies this way iirc! And you can even increase distance this way too if you hold the direction button to where the monkeys land on their feet (can't really describe it, I can only do it from muscle memory). But if you don't use these features much, I recommend just standing around and experimenting and playing around with them (If you throw your buddy and you see them dizzy or in Dixie's case, crying, you're doing it wrong).
I‘m 15 hours deep in Paper Mario, first time playing in many years. This game’s design is so properly addicting and the writing still has me entertained. What an imaginative expansion of the world of Mario, a uniquely designed world especially for the era, and an amazing use of N64 hardware. It even foreshadows luigi's mansion, which would be released a year later.
It may be the single last great 240p Nintendo game.
@CidNight#18971 Heck yeah! I‘d say go for the PS4 version, or something other than the Switch. For some reason on the Switch, they just took out the Monsterboy/Wonderboy games and they did not replace anything for it! (Unless you don’t care for those games and just like the portability of it of course)
@tapevulture#18976 Yeah, it really is pretty difficult, even with a pro controller. When I play that game in fields of combat I just spam the jump and attack button while moving around (even when jumping and attacking isn‘t neccessary!). In the villages, I just like hopping on NPC’s heads
I don’t have much draw to the monster boy games and definitely like the portability of the switch. Landstalker is one I want to play (I never have), but I have a pro controller. Even with the pro controller it’s bad?
@CidNight#18981 i wouldnt say its bad, but something does feel off! I dont have the actual genesis version to compare it to unfortunately. Its an isometric game so to move around you will always be holding onto two directional buttons. Maybe its just it being an isometric game that makes it feel off because im not used to them!
I had a game filled weekend. I accomplished absolutely nothing, but I feel pretty dang good about it.
I continued my exploration into shorter form story stuff. It's great being able to experience a thing in its entirety in like 10-20 minutes. This time I played [Behind Every Great One](https://deconstructeam.itch.io/behind-every-great-one). It's freeware that deconstructeam started off doing for Ludum Dare 42. The theme was "running out of space", and they smashed it out of the park. It's heavy and not at all fun to play, but it's compelling. I'll likely give the rest of deconstructeam's catalog a go at some point. They're doing big things in small packages.
Made it to the Planet level in [holedown](https://holedown.com/). The game's not doing anything new I guess, but it's very satisfying to play in short stints on the phone. I don't know anything about pachinko but I imagine I'm having the same dopamine reaction when landing a fatty combo (which honestly feels accidental a lot of the time). It's got the same game/economy/upgrade loop as something like Ridiculous Fishing.
I dunked a handful of credits into Blazing Lazers. I enjoyed it a lot! Especially as a stark contrast to my more modern shooter background. Maybe I'll post more about my experience with it in the STG thread later.
Lastly, I got to stage 3 of Super Valis IV. It's very different from the ones I've played on the Genesis. I didn't even realize till midway into stage 2 that there was a run mechanic. I don't know that I enjoy the anxiety of seeing the end stage boss's healthbar tick up as a stage timer, but it's an interesting concept nonetheless. Ehh, that probably sums up my feelings on the game overall.
I have just started playing Persona 5 Strikers. I loved P5, and I'm surprised by how much this game is doing Persona story beats and not just a big Musou / Warriors style game.
It certainly has a lot of huge combat arenas, but it is very much its own thing and not “Persona 5 Warriors”, which has been a pleasant surprise.
I'm still very early on, so I can't speak much to what I think about it other than at least for now I want to keep playing it -- so that's probably a decent enough sign?
Anyone else here checked it out yet? I think I am awful at the combat, but maybe that is because I haven't upgraded gear on anyone. I seem to be getting characters suffering huge damage seemingly out of the blue. I suspect that I'm getting smashed by elemental weakness effects, but I am having a very hard time seeing if any of that is being telegraphed amongst the mayhem.
There's just not much actual stuff in the game. The story leans way too much on long expository passages. And the ethical dilemmas and questions re effectiveness of app-ified mental health services was, for me, frustratingly focused on tech-industry hypotheticals about AI, data harvesting, etc. The parts of the game that I found most resonant were the rare glimpses of the social/material problems from which mental health distress grows
But the game only momentarily alights on this topic. Frustrating bc the game is mostly about finding a moral path, and the screamingly obvious orientation isn't much considered. Not an omission as irony, game's just more interested in socioeconomically detached tech stuff
@X3N0Sbioz#18985 @CidNight not sure about you guys but i don‘t think i can skate by with having whatever nintendo releases next as my primary gaming device for the next generation of consoles. that’s what i attempted to do this time. i bought a lot of stuff that got multi-platform releases for the switch and was disappointed almost every time. that and joycon drift. joycon drift is like…cmon man
switch was cheaper but i do think it's kind of a you get what you pay for situation. i'm not commuting anymore tho so i'm not fully realizing the potential of the console
