Cause it's on the Dreamcast
@āAndy Bā#p140398 I personally prefer the Nioh games but Wo Long is a more streamlined game with a parry / counter system as its central mechanic. The first boss practically forces you to engage in parrying but it's a very worthwhile ātutorialā for it. Besides, that game will let you parry anything. Literally anything.
It's an easier game overall but one or two of the bosses in the main campaign are hard as nuts but not as hard as the _**hard**_ side missions in either Nioh. Doable but will require some perseverance and patience.
@āAndy Bā#p140398 I loved Wo Long!
I recommend giving it a shot, thereās a lot of interesting stuff going on in that game.
I found the first boss pretty tough, but it depends on how long it takes you to figure out the timing.
Iām impatient and stupid so it took me awhile.
I finished Resident Evil DS! It was very fun. Since Signalis made me realize I might really like this genre now, Iāve been looking for my path into the Resident Evil series (except 4, Iāve played 4), and I found it! I was totally out of ammo and healing items at the final boss, but I did, in fact, survive the horror.
I got to 1st Dan in _Riichi City_. First time I've done that on any mahjong platform, and despite the game, I'm still pretty proud.
I did a first go-through of _Refind Self: The Personality Test Game_. Saw it come out on Steam today and thought it looked interesting. It _is_ interesting! It's a choice & consequence game, and it pays very close attention to what you do. Not just what choices, but how fast you made them; it watches every little interaction and in what order you do them.
But also, you're limited in what you can do in one run, sort of like this is a _Moon_ or a _Chibi Robo_. After just the one run, which took about an hour, I have the tiniest pieces of what the narrative actually is, and after you clear it, the game welcomes you to do a second run (it unlocks stuff, even), so I'll be digging in some more, see what's there.
Oh, and my personality is "Clergy".
I only just bought, started and finished Yakuza 6. Itās without a doubt the quickest Iāve ever finished a full-size game, with in-game time clocked in at 16 hours.
Really only played it because it was advised I should as it leads into Man With No Name, so now I can buy and play that (and take my time doing so).
I think I completed maybe four or five sidequests? Really just felt no need to complete them, and always felt interrupted when I came across one in my travels. Literally only completed a single one of those fight/battle minigames and out of everything, about the only thing I feel like completing is the cat cafe one.
Is it because I felt the need to pay so much attention to the main story that everything else felt superfluous compared to other RGG titles, or were the side stories poorly integrated compared to the other games I've played?
Among constant hopping around and snacking on thin slices of all kindsa stuff (Baroque, New Vegas, Cyberpunk, River King, Suika Game, a few arcade games a day), Star Ocean the Second Story R has caught most of my attention lately. I know some of yaāll really donāt like the HD-2D (a monumentally dumb name) style that this is adjacent to, but I personally have always found great joy in RPGs with polygonal worlds and pixel art characters, so I'm having a very good time looking at it.
And as a second remake of a second game, it feels wholly sanded of abrasions, especially if that's the experience you're looking for. You can crank it up and scrape yourself as much as you want, too; having played half of this and a few hours of Star Ocean First Departure R, that seems to be part of the fun of Star Ocean -- it offers you a great deal of tools and an equally great deal of trust. All these little menu-based systems that neatly play off of each other, like two dozen singular but overlapping skill trees. I bet you'd be fine never touching them and having yourself a straightforward JRPG. But if you want to throw on the ability for your party members to grab hold of on-map enemies so you can back attack and to pick up random items as you walk around and to send pigeons out from dungeons to bring you supplies, go ahead and do that. Trivialize the game and make your whole party experts at everything. Everyone's a flute-playing, book-writing, faerologist blacksmith, fine. Not much more to say other than it's a classical JRPG situation that goes down with incredibly skillful smoothness.
Also finished Yakuza 3, which when playing in narrative order starting with 0, felt like the most contained Yakuza yet. I never stopped enjoying it. Excellent that Kiryu's shoes automatically disappear when he steps from the sands of Okinawa into his orphanage. I felt one moment of friction in that he never put his tropical shirt back on when returning to the beach from Kamurocho. Then, of course, you roll the credits, Premium Adventure mode appears, you are given the option to wear the tropical shirt. Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio gently kisses you on the forehead. I put the shirt on Kiryu and play a single round of golf after the credits. Everything's OK now. On to Yakuza 4.
Iāve been backlog busting for so long that Iāve earned a little treat. Iām on a self indulgent Zelda kick. Playing OoT for the 100th time, but this time I mean business. Iām doing all the sidequests for real. And I'm doing it all on a custom master quest rom with tons of neat fan-made QoL featuresā on hardware. Some of the features are lifelong wish fulfillment for me, like:
tons of minute details that I've meticulously chosen.
Check out the [Patcher64+ Tool](https://github.com/Admentus64/Patcher64Plus-Tool) if you are interested.
Then today on the train, instead of booting Golden Sun on my gameboy, I booted Minish Cap.... I have a save file that's past the first dungeon, which is good because I've *started* minish cap so many times but never gotten very deep, I think I past the second and third dungeons only once, but I've passed the first dungeon maybe five times at this point. Nice to have that behind me already going in.
@"tokucowboy"#653 I've lagged behind. I booted Kiwami 2 a couple times but haven't played in months. It's nice to know that Yakuza is always there for me. 3 seems really cool, not sure if I have much to look forward to in kiwami 2, and the different engine is a little jarring, especially knowing I'm going back to the old engine for 3,4, and 5 hahaha. I am really looking forward to going to the orphanage at some point in the series.
It includes a lot of patches Iād had trouble finding / patching myself, including ones for games besides Zelda, like the DK64 swap kongs anytime patch. 8 could t get that one working on my hardware until I used patcher64+ tool!
@ātreefroggyā#p140629 I appreciated how luxurious and robust Kiwami 2 was even going from 0/Kiwami 1 (had no idea they were gonna bust out that new engine on me) ā and I look forward to seeing how wild the modern games get ā but dialing it back down to the PS3 era is cool and comfortable in a different way. Okinawa orphanage vibes are just unparalleled. You know itās good when thereās a fishing pole permanently stuck on the shore for you
And, yeah, a part of me wanted to see if I could get through all of these and play a Yakuza game while it was new next year, but I don't think I will -- I agree that it's just nice to know they're always there
I did it. I beat Electroplankton (2005).
>
@āmtvcribsā#p140484 I loved Wo Long!
> I recommend giving it a shot,
I just tried Wo Long. Maybe I'm not in the mood or maybe I'm tired of this formula.[ There's a long winded opening with ancient art scrolling by while an old man monologues.](https://forums.insertcredit.com/d/2287-the-thread-in-which-we-discuss-the-videogames-we-are-playing-in-the-year-2023/2032) Then they give me a companion who won't shut up. The opening level is a burning village. The controls are very floaty. Otherwise It feels very Nioh adjacent.
Maybe this is controversial but I can't help but wonder what kind of Soulslike Itagaki might've made if he was still the head of Team Ninja. I imagine he might make something more elegant and simple. Something where the game speaks for itself without NPCs yammering at you. And it would definitely be beautiful.
When it comes to Wo Long, I loved Sekiro more than possibly any other FS game ever (save perhaps for King's Field), mainly cause of the beautiful setting. So Wo Long is there for me when I want more of that. NiOh is also there for me, but I want to play more games leading up to NiOh, like team ninja stuff.
I havenāt been able to get Little Goody Two Shoes off the brain quite yet, so uhhh. I wrote some stuff I guess! I donāt know if itās any fun to read or if it reads well, but itās getting close to my bedtime and I kinda just want to throw this out there. It contains spoilers regarding the end of Little Goody Two Shoes as well as the general outline of the game and certain plot elements, so donāt read if you donāt want to know too much or if you don't feel like wasting your time
>!
As I mentioned a while back, I finished Little Goody Two Shoes! Though, in what way have I properly finished it if I only attained 3 of the gameās 10 different endings? This is the dilemma I face. Not a dilemma of feeling ready to move on to another game while hearing a voice nagging in the back of my head, āYouāve still got work to do, bucko,ā guilting me into spending unwanted time with the game. Much the way NieR did when I swapped the role of āDad NieRā for āJanitorā after Yoko Taro paged me over the intercom to let me know that I was needed for Clean-Up in Aisles C and D. No, this time I find myself staring at an unfinished list of endings, filled with the desire to see them through because I want to spend more time in this world, with these characters, listening to this music, and seeing everything that I havenāt yet seen, yet knowing the content of these endings would only do me emotional harm.
>!
>!
In recent years Iāve grown soft. I couldnāt finish Resident Evil Village because one of the Dimitrescu Daughters was shocked upon my having shot her in the brain with a gun in self-defense. āDonāt you love me,ā she yelled at me. The answer to that question was apparently, yes. Well, insofar as that I couldnāt bring myself to inflict digital violence on her due to a strange unease that settled within me after my bullets were met with that confusion. Maybe it was a trick of the voice work, or the detail of the graphics? Iām not sure, but it feels beyond silly that I did not finish a game I spent $60 on because I was afraid of hurting a fictional villainās feelings. It happened again in It Takes Two, in a chapter where the two playable parents decide that the only path forward is to destroy their daughterās favorite toy. My partner in the game (and in real life) was not excited to do this. I was thrilled. Emboldened by my player characterās resolve, I was eager to engage in the carnage. But then, once more, I heard a voice crying out, hurt by my actions. And just like that, I crumbled. I could not bring myself to hurt this stuffed animal. Like Resident Evil Village before it, It Takes Two went unfinished. I will likely never finish either of these two games. And wouldnāt you know it, Iāve got another one to add to that list.
>!
>!
Little Goody Two Shoes lets us spend a week in the life of Elise, a girl left alone after her adoptive Grandmother Holleās passing. Sheās plenty capable of taking care of herself, at least enough to get by one day at a time, but she yearns for a life of luxury. A life of excess. Jewels, dresses, and a whole lotta maids to do her bidding. A life where she is on top, leaving the small town of Kieferberg down in the dirt where it belongs. This is what she wishes to herself as the game begins, a wish that may actually come true if she can manage to complete a ritual and meet the enigmatic āHim.ā To do so is simple enough: manage to survive the day without starving or riling the townsfolk up enough to convince them that youāre a witch, and overcome dangerous trials by night in the ever-changing woods. Oh, and manage to win the heart of one of the three maidens in town. By Saturday night, if Elise played her cards right, sheāll have the three gifts she needs to complete the ritual, meet Him, and in doing so, have her wish granted. Now, that probably sounds sketchy to most folk, yeah? I certainly do. Well, so too, do the Golden Maidens you can find throughout the world at nightfall, all depicted wearing the same pair of red shoes Elise found buried in her garden one morning. Most of them donāt seem too happy with the way things turned out when they tried their hands at the ritual. Already, well before Elise finds herself standing there in the woods, gifts placed on their pedestals, portal to His realm open and beckoning her to the other side, it is made clear that this ritual is Bad News. But if itās her only shot at the life she craves, why not take that chance? After all, there is reason to believe the ritual may work; Granny Holle was unable to conceive, and yet one day came to have a child living with her. That child is of course, Elise. Holle claims that it was the woods that granted her her only wish, her wish to have a child. So if her Granny Holleās wish was granted, why, again, should Elise not take that chance?
>!
>!
The answer to that lies in the nature of the third and final gift Elise needs to complete the ritual: The Good Company. Once Elise achieves a strong enough bond with one of the three women, sheās gifted a token of their appreciation. That token is then used in the ritual to open His realm. Now, I may be a dumb baby, but I am not an idiot. I know that if I send Elise into that place, her love interest will die. Rozenmarine will die. The same Rozenmarine that told Elise WITH GLEE of her treasured pinecone, of her fate as Eliseās soulmate, and of her affection being so true that even without it being written in the stars, she would still choose to be with Elise. And I knew that before the Golden Maidens were kind enough to share that information with me! I refuse to watch ANY amount of harm come to Rozenmarine, and thankfully, the developers at AstralShift were willing to meet me at that line I drew in the sand, and gave Elise the option to walk away at the very end, and instead enjoy a life with her sweetheart. Whoever it may be.
>!
>!
But what about everything that happens once you cross from the woods into His realm? What does it look like? The other Witching Hour environments were captivating, surely His would be as well? And what of the music? What is He like? I have questions, and yet, I know the price to be paid if I want the answers. Little Goody Two Shoes is a game I cannot bring myself to finish, at least in the 100%ing Completionist sort of way. Again, I got the ending I wanted, and it was followed by credits and everything. It feels genuine. But I wonāt make Elise walk through that portal, and I wonāt watch someone else do it for me either. Before I called it quits with Super Mario Bros. (ugh) Wonder, I made sure to do absolutely everything there was to do. I got my blue checkmark, and my brain filed it in the āFinishedā bin. Seeing those unseen endings on the endings list confuses my brain. Weāre not done yet, are we? Much like Elise, I find myself standing there, wondering whether or not my heart could take it if the consequences prove too dire.
>!
>!
I mean, yeah it could. I would be fine in the long run. It wouldnāt actually kill me, but like I dunno, why not let the lesbians be happy? My partner in life (and in It Takes Two) and I are watching Castlevania Nocturne, and early on one of the main characters is slyly revealed as gay. Heās also loudly revealed as dead. Then revived as a Night Creature. With his memory partially intact, it seems? So thereās hope yet. Plus itās not like heās the only gay character in the show, so that softens the blow a bit as well. But sometimes itās nice to enjoy a story about queer folk with a happy ending without any characters having to suffer too greatly along the way. Elise already had to struggle to survive on her own in a town so small that the only means of making money it could offer her was doing other peoplesā chores. Stuck in poverty, with people who are willing to turn on her all while the serious harm being done to them is caused by their beloved priest. Why make her suffer more, or make her love interest suffer at all? Late in the game just about everyone turns on you, and if you play it wrong and pick the incorrect dialogue choices, I think it results in a Game Over where she is tried for witchcraft. I canāt say for sure, because I didnāt play it wrong. I played it right. And thatās why thereās a picture of Elise and Rozenmarine gazing at each other sitting on my desktop background at this very moment. I love Little Goody Two Shoes for its art, for its music, for its characters, for its simplistic gameplay sprinkled deliciously throughout, and most of all for just letting me fucking have this!!! If you managed to read this all, thanks for sticking with me. I hope you feel like you can still enjoy playing the game if you havenāt yet. I donāt think itās something that can be truly spoiled in a quick outline like this, as the fun for me came from enjoying it all at my own pace. Thereās plenty to see and do, and I highly recommend that you do just that.
And to justify making a post that I don't think many people will want to read considering it talk about the ending of a recently released game, uhhhhhh, have yall seen (and heard) the main menu of this Little Goody Two Shoes game??? It even moves around when you move the mouse! They didn't have to do that! You can't even select any options on the menu with the mouse!!
I played two and half hours of Tales of Berseria tonight, on the recommendation of a friend of @Funbil's, and I think I like it!
People seem to be really big on this entry's story and setting, but I'd read a lot of trash talk over its combat system so I set the difficulty to easy from the beginning. After a while it started to feel a bit too brainless and mashy so I threw it back up to normal again and suddenly battles feel a lot more tense haha. I don't know if I'll keep it that way as there is seemingly no autosave. It'll depend on how annoyed I am at my first game over.
It's been a while since I played a big meaty Japanese RPG. I haven't played a lot of new ones. It looks like a high-res PS2 game with a sort of generic interface that's full of gradients and not much character, but the environments are extremely pretty and I love the painterly textures. The facial animations felt a little too vtuber until the inciting incident and then suddenly that changed. They can clash with the care put into the 2D cutscenes. The skits are dumb like an anime stupid.
I like the main character. She's hardcore. They told me *Berseria* was the darkest game in the series, and I was afraid things were going to be a little too dark but the first two companions are already pretty goofy so I have hope. Everyone's a hottie also.
I'm putting caution to the wind. I wanna see how long it'll take to finish this or drop it. Howlongtobeat puts it at anywhere between 32 and 70 hours for the main plot. You can't scare me, I've made up my mind already. I wanna play the sexy goth pirate.
[URL=https://i.imgur.com/Gd2cBeP.jpg]
[IMG]https://i.imgur.com/Gd2cBeP.jpg[/IMG][/URL]
I liked Berseria a lot for the story and characters but the gameplay loop unfortunately got monotonous and I fell off of it. Really cool game though!
Iām playing the Mario kart dlc last batch thing and Iām extremely disappointed in the fact that there isn't a Mexico City course in the tour tracks (which are kinda bad imo) not enough colors and not enough clear indications of when the tracks change))
I mean I don't how well know is this but there is a whole neighborhood with a Dr Simi (google it if you want to know more but it's an iconic symbol of extremely affordable medicine) painted on houses on a hill and they could've just replaced him with a doctor Mario face.
[URL=https://i.imgur.com/qSPQvG5.jpg]
[IMG]https://i.imgur.com/qSPQvG5.jpg[/IMG][/URL]
Also mexico city is bigger and more interesting than most of the cities featured imo
@āconnrrrā#p140842 I had a great time with this game. Sounds like you're in the right mindset for it, I say go for it! One of my favorite bits is how you can change different outfit elements of the whole cast and they appear like that in cut scenes. I thought the battle system was fun and remained interesting for at least half of the game - which is pretty good for a big beefy RPG! It helps that you can choose to control different party members. I switched things up whenever one character started feeling stale.
Finally playing Tears of The Kingdom. I could not get into it when it first came out, despite loving Breath of The Wild. I currently do not really have the same amount of time for gaming as I used to have nor the focus. Still not sure if I will end up finishing it as it is quite big and I would also like to play other games. I am just working on it slowly especially because I have difficulty sleeping now as I just play that instead. Playing it in such a way makes me feel like I can just explore freely again without time or tasks pressing.
The game itself is what I had hoped it to be when I first finished BOTW yet I feel there is a lot of missed opportunity. Truly reflecting on it, the weird reset of/alternate timeline is not a decision I would have made. Especially considering the last DLC, the idea of maybe taking a risk and making a Hyrule trying to modernise itself with the Sheikah technology would have been neat and allowed for interesting ideas and mechanics (kind of like what they also originally wanted to do looking at the original concept art). With this alternate timeline it feels like an alternate BOTW, maybe more refined (yet held back by the switch's technology) but it does not fully feel like they were able to get everything out of BOTW.
I do absolutely love that the world is now more layered. I do not get bored exploring and like just strolling down a mine or flying up to check out some island. The islands allow me to just look at the lands and sky and just kind of appreciate the view. Plus I think the robots are pretty neat
Rolled credits last night on Return of Double Dragon for SFC. This is the first time I've played through to the end despite playing Super Double Dragon since release. Its a shame that so much was cut from the game and that it has never been expanded on in any official capacity. Add a few more moves for your character, a couple more bosses along with a extra mooks and this would be peak Double Dragon. I know there are some fan games made with the BOR engine that add some of that and have been meaning to try them.
Played some Citizen Sleeper, as the Insert Credit Brain Trust has burdened me with it, and I think this game has very smartly lifted and adapted ideas from ttrpgs in way I find really impressive. There's not quite a āfail forwardā design, which would be ideal for me, but at least having a neutral space between success and failure is a step in the right direction.
And best of all, this game has clocks! Clocks are ubiquitous in cool ttrpgs, but this is the first time I've seen them in a video game. They're such a simple thing, but can do so much. A project is difficult? That's a eight or sixteen segment clock, and now is feels like it takes effort. Or like, you can introduce a clock that just says "the barrel of the gun" or some nonsense and nobody knows what that is until it counts down. Clocks rule, is what I'm saying. Put clocks in your game.
Two things slightly bug me about it. I think it's overwritten. I wish there were more nouns that didn't have adjectives. The other thing is actually a ttrpg pet peeve, which is maybe in some way a credit to the game; but I don't like, and try to avoid in my own games, when the narrator tells the player how their character feels about something. I think that should be up to the player. There have been several cases where the narrator has told me that my character feels a way, but I (in my roleplay of this character) do not feel that way at all. I think if the game weren't so smart about applying ttrpg principles in other places, I wouldn't even notice this, but because it does it's just a bit off-putting when it happens.