Friend of the show Kris Graft joins Ash and Brandon diving into the rest of 2024’s games, from GOTY contenders to Soccer 2: The Even More Beautiful Game. Hosted by Brandon Sheffield, with Ash Parrish and Kris Graft. Edited by Esper Quinn, original music by Kurt Feldman.
Great episode, and there’s a few more games that I’d like to check out thanks to the conversations! Kris was a great guest too and hearing his enthusiasm for games that were a total unknown to me was joyous.
I think you’d enjoy revisiting Rise of the Ronin, Brandon. Thinking back to your comments on Gran Blue Fantasy, the main campaign / critical path is relatively brisk with some cool set pieces but there’s a bunch of stuff that you can optionally get stuck into: some micro missions that have just the right amount of challenge and let you finish most of them pretty much just with your projectile weapons if you want. There’s neat, if fairly surface-level, relationship mechanics which are fun to explore too.
The open world areas are a good size too. Big enough that they feel expansive but not so much that you’re having to often spend more than a minute or two to get to something interesting happening.
Some of the boss battles are a little on the tough side from what I recall but there’s nothing as difficult as most of the bosses in the Niohs or the Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty - mostly by virtue of almost all the bosses being regular people. Team Ninja took a shot and it landed.
On Dragon Age: The Veilguard: I wish I was into Emmerich’s archetype! I feel like people who romanced him ended up loving Veilguard much more than I did. None of the characters in this one were really “for” me, which I think made much of what BioWare was trying to do with the cast fall flat in my case. The combat really is the strongest part of the game, though. It’s probably the best action combat BioWare has ever managed, and it’s a shame Veilguard is probably going to end up the last in the series now, meaning they’ll never get to iterate on it
I’ll also second revisiting Rise of the Rōnin. I think it sort of got overshadowed by FFVII Rebirth and Dragon’s Dogma II (which actually launched on the same day), and while it’s not really a game of the year contender it’s got a lot of heart in it, which I think counts for a lot
Also, just want to add: Ash and Brandon have a great rapport which makes for a great listening experience even once the show was down to the two of them. I’m so glad she’s joined the show
I love the inclusion of some more “obscure” indie games, such as Dubio, Cruel, and Castaway.
On top of Castaway being amazing, I’d have Garbanzo Quest as one of my GOTY. It’s an excellent 2D platformer that has great difficulty progression and mechanics similar to things I’ve seen in Mario World romhacks. It needs a lot more love. (Currently on sale!)
Yeahhhh Garbanzo Quest! I posted a couple times in the What We Playing thread about this, finished it not long after it came out. Really, truly remarkable platformer if you like a jumping and shooting platformer.
My only caveat was that I didn’t love the writing or characters, but the mechanics make up for that and then some.
The characters and writing are so minimal in relation to the experience that they definitely don’t take away from it. (Just like a Mario romhack with a “story” )
Love the art for the characters, though. Some fun designs in there.
I’m listening now, and I actually know why Frank played Metaphor as his first Atlus/Persona game. When Tim hosted the show that one time I guess early 24 or late 23, one of his questions was “What game should we make Frank play this year” and Metaphor edged Persona 3 Reload. Not sure why those were the picks but they were
@esper Not sure if it’s just me but I think Brandon’s voice track could use a mouth de-clicking pass. I don’t think I have misophonia but I’m feeling it a lil bit!
On Another Crab’s Treasure - As someone else who has something rotten in their spirit and finds no joy in Souls-likes, I actually LOVED Another Crab’s Treasure. Notably because it offers sliders/amounts you can set for things like Damage you take, Health Enemies have, Longer Invincibility Dodge Window, Extend Parry Window, etc etc. Basically, if I was ever having repeated issue I knew I didn’t want to develop a throwaway skill for with a boss or sequence it was easy to hop into the menu and immediately change what was causing my a problem and swap it back when I was through that sequence.
There’s a big note before you change any of them that’s basically “hey the settings as default are how we optimized/intended play, but we’d rather you enjoy and experience the game so feel free to change what you want if it isn’t working.”
Another game that did this was also NINE SOLS. A taopunk nightmare Sekiro-like… Which offered similarly dynamic sliders for various things and has an amazing story I am so happy I got to experience, and would not have had the patience to do some of those bosses 50x times to get thru it (but I can recognize how impressive and skilled people are at playing the game who can do that.)
For me having those two games with such tight and impressive boss and world experiences go “Hey, we actually want you to play this game and have fun? So, we trust you to gauge what we made based on how we expected you to play it, not how busted you make it. But if making it busted is fun for you go at it.” was refreshing and has made me think about the 120hrs I put into Elden Ring at the behest of folks as just, so much more of an utterly miserable experience I need not replicate ever again. So they both have a real special place in my heart.
So play them both if you haven’t. They’re fantastic.
The tactics will matter, you will learn something that is gonna goblinize your Brainicorn and you will be in the spreadsheets that moment forward.
But you have to want it. As soon as I felt I was understanding the systems even a little bit, I cranked the difficulty up. I really wanted to engaged the system so I played in a way I would have to. The game gets to a point where that strong unit your start with becomes dead weight due to poor damage output and is actually a detriment because of how experience is distributed.
But the difficulty doesn’t necessarily ramp at that point, it takes a little while for it become apparent that you aren’t as efficient as 8 hrs ago which I think still isn’t fast enough. People needed to get their ass beat hour 12. I don’t feel this organically happens until about half way into Elhiem. If you go in the suggested order of progression, that probably is the 3rd region. It was the second for me. I wanted my ass beat.
I think the commercial success of this one does speak to what Brandon felt, but it wasn’t that the scaled it back as much as they trivialized the tactics for hrs until they knew you were locked in.
Rise of the Ronin shared a release window with Dragon’s Dogma 2 and Unicorn Overlord. I think the curiosity big game trend types that would have tried it in passing probably just played DD2. I didn’t even get to it until Decemeber. Meanwhile at least once a month I see if VW announced that New game+ update.
I’m glad Brandon mentioned Dubio, because this and another game that was in a somewhat similar fashion were recommended to me by the end of the year, and Dubio is a kind of a game I wanted to have more frequently, since I am digging for shorter games I can play whenever I feel like it.
There are some games I didn’t know, so thanks up for those, like Thronefall. Also, it’s been some sort of amazing to hear about what people like us hear about some games, what I’ve had for those who are a little bit more casual, and those who are in the industry when hearing this episode, and you realize how much different tastes and circles we have between each other.
Hellblade 2 was so disappointing that I immediately started replaying it again when I got to the end, because I felt like I must have missed something. Liked it even less the second time. I loved the first game but they really went in a different direction with the sequel.
Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden was also disappointing, but I want to rescue Red and Antea and put them in a better story. The scenes with just the two of them talking were pretty solid.
I’ve had a lot of fun with Marvel Rivals, but only because I’ve been playing with Overwatch nerds who could explain all of the hero shooter stuff. It’s surprising how incomplete the tutorial/onboarding is for a free-to-play game with such a big audience. I wonder if the developers assumed that the genre is established enough that people don’t need to have tanks/dps/support and whatnot explained.
That was my assumption - there’s no way they’d dump us into a relatively black box otherwise. I bet ash would’ve been able to tell me what to do with a few words, but I was totally lost from the get go.
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