Any advice for me to get past the first 10 minutes without dying or is this part of the experience
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No lie, I use cheat engine.
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Same thing happened to me 
I read on the Steam discussion board that you should run away from monsters before you have a full party, but, like, I tried that! Kept running into them anyways. Like do I suck that bad or what lol
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they look like jrpg battles but you donāt level up or anything yeah you donāt want to be fighting if you can help it. It can be pretty risky to save your game often not worth it
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for better or worse, i think this will be the game that gets me into mods for the first time ever.
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cause i cant focus on just one thing at a time (Yakuza 0, still going strong) i decided to start on Nioh.
still very early on, but its interesting at least. mistakes are harshly punished with how easy it is to die, but doesnt feel quite as fair as it would eventually feel in sekiro as its far to easy to get comboed and die immediately by a lot of the enemies. the combat is quite cool tho, with three styles for each weapon, having to switch as needed is fun and is encouraged by the ki pulse, giving stamina back, more if into a different style.
level design seems pretty alright with enemy groups being interesting so far. the ranged option makes this a little cooler, picking off the more annoying enemies from a dist. the actual pathways are relatively alright as well, having a decent interconnectedness within itself, but only in the first real area, and it doesnt look like itll connect, so discrete levels maybe? nothing wrong with that.
see if i cant keep up with it cause it is very punishing but kinda fun.
oh yeah, the loot system is a bit underbaked. doesnt suit it super well, and just clogs it up a bunch. maybe im missing something with sorting, but even then its a bit too much. submenus for weapon type would work well, or just not having a rarity system. idk, could become better
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I finished playing Final Fantasy VI for the umpteenth time. This time I tried out the pixel remaster version, mainly because I wanted to check out the orchestral soundtrack. FFVI remains a great game, but the pixel remaster feels pretty unnecessary.
To give a little credit, at least this is now the standard instead of that atrocious phone port. The phone port was the Ecce Homo of video game remasters, just a comically bad restoration. To compare the pixel remaster to another form of media remaster, Iād say FFVI PR is a lot like the Lucas Star Wars revisions from the 90ās ā a largely pointless glossing up that removes a lot of charm of the original.
On the whole, thereās nothing heinously wrong with the pixel remaster, but it sorta suffers a death by a thousand paper cuts ā it just has so many trivial differences that feel like minor downgrades from the SNES original. The new character sprites are offputtingly oversaturated and plasticy-smooth looking. The various new 3D spell and environment animations are fine, but I largely prefer the charm of the originals. Most of the Mode 7 segments like flying the airship and swimming the Serpent Trench feel gutted. The camera moves incredibly slow and wonky in these segments, causing them to lose all sense of spectacle. The camera now stutters whenever it moves during scripted events, characters stutter as well whenever they move during these scenes. The opera scene was really disappointing to me, I think the HD-2D looks plain bad and I didnāt like any of the singersā performances. Many of the new sound effect choices are grating. Why does Edgarās bow sound like firecrackers?
The UI is annoyingly intrusive. There are now icons on the screen at all times that tell what button presses do and a mini-map that you can press start to hide, but it reappears after every screen transition so itās effectively on the screen at all times. The party menus has been completely overhauled and rearranged, but I wouldnāt even say itās an improvement, itās sorta change for the sake of change because there isnāt really much in the way of quality of life improvements. Iād say the hugest annoyance of FF6 has always been the esper level up bonuses. With all the changes they made to the game why didnāt they fix this? If you want to ensure your party members are getting the level up perks you desire it becomes a chore of going into the party menu and juggling materia between characters every other battle. An exclamation point now pops above your characterās head any time they are standing where an item or interactable object is, just like in FFIX. Between the minimap, the exclamation marks and hidden passages now being outlined when you get near them it feels like theyāre really dampening the joy of discovery in the game, but I guess itāll save some players from checking every single tile at least.
There are some positives. In contrast to the character sprites, the environments and enemy sprites feel like fairly faithful modernizations ā which really makes the character sprites look out of place. The translation is an improvement from the SNES version. Many times there is an extra line of dialogue here or there that wasnāt present in the SNES version, that helps clarify the situation. I also noticed a couple situations where lines from the SNES version that didnāt make total sense now have proper context. Iām guessing this is due to the original translator taking liberties. For instance, when you first talk to Sabin after the battle with Vargas and his pet bears, on SNES Terra says to Sabin, something to the effect of, āI thought you were a body builder who strayed from his gym.ā To which, Sabin later replies, āThink a ābearā like me could be of any help?ā Given this context Iām guessing Sabin just wants to be really forward about his orientation. In the pixel remaster Terra says, āAt first, I thought you were another one of Vargasās bears.ā This makes Sabin referring to himself as a ābearā make a good bit more sense. The new soundtrack is solid. I generally prefer the SNES tracks and some of the new tracks come off sort of flat or have odd-sounding instrument choices at times, but I enjoyed a fair amount of the new soundtrack.
In short, just emulate the SNES version instead.
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what do you mean to mitigate difficulty?
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There is a mod that turns coin tosses in your favor but the one that really has my eye is one that gives you 99 saves.
I havenāt installed either yet and will likely put a few more hours into the game before doing so but figured Iād sooner do that than just not play the game at all.
Iāve started playing Princess Maker 2 for the Switch. Iām doing this pretty much without guidance. A few notes with pictures:
- I messed up the first few months. I chose a study not knowing that the 30/40 GP was per day of study. I chose the āinnkeeperā work very early not knowing my daughter would make mistakes every day and not get paid. I messed up several palace visits before getting anything out of it, and even now that part of the game is slippery to me.
- I have figured out giving rest and (I think) lecturing my daughter when sheās delinquent, but Iām sure there are under-the-hood mechanics Iām not aware of.
- Iāve tried wandering errantly a few times, and I have zero feel for how to win fights. Creepy men remind my daughter to not be out alone, and then megafauna attack. I can only sometimes run or hide.
- Due to that difficulty, Iāve focused more on what I can control: COOKING. Doing a ton of domestic chores has made my daughter into a cooking beast, and now she earns ~150 GP per round of work at the Restaurant. Now I just need to figure out how to get from this to any of the stats on the top half of the page.
- The domestic house spirit has visited me twice. Awwww yeah.
- One time, my daughter went missing for a month and I couldnāt do anything. Then she came back and it was like nothing happened. Uh, what? I donāt know what caused that or if thereās anything to do about it.
Overall, this has been a fun exercise. Sim games often involve a lot of front-end work figuring out how the designer thinks about the behavior theyāre modeling. Itās not like an action game where the main game verbs are straightforward and literal (jump, run). Instead, I have to figure out everything around āstudyā - the costs, the effects, what else that may feed into.
Euro board games are a good model of how this kind of puzzling out works in play. One can play Settlers of Catan and see how building in a place gets you (or doesnāt get you) resources that allow you to build new things to get you new things to scale up into the objectives of the game. Outside the instructions, I always have a palpable sense of just needing to play it to see how the logic of the game unfolds, how one action leads to a certain effect.
Early sim games like this feel designed around the same experience. Try to raise your daughter. See what happens. Bumbling through the sim aligns well with bumbling through parenthood.
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I will spoiler it in case you donāt want to know, but this is something I wish someone had told me when I first started (spoilers for how running away works): a high sensitivity stat gives her a higher chance of running away.
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Metroid Prime has its hooks in me completely. I just got the Ice Beam and I am really, really enjoying it.
Itās funny because there are so many reasons why I shouldnāt like the game. I donāt like shooters, it kind of makes my hands hurt after boss fights or rooms where I have to bounce around avoiding and locking onto enemies. The first person HUD disorients me sometimes, especially when bouncing back and forth with third person, I keep wanting to take Samusās helmet off and get a wider field of view. The biological stuff is gross, and 3D models are very offputting compared to 2D sprites. The game will often mess with your vision and your ability to understand what is going on. Thereās a ton of meaningless text to wade through but some important/useful stuff in there so you end up scanning and reading everything. There are some tedious sequences between saves that make you run through things a lot of times. All of these things would be very frustrating in another game.
And yet, I am having a blast. The presentation is off the charts and the exploration and puzzle solving makes up for everything because it feels so nice. I think the measured pacing and they way they are ramping things up works very well with what theyāre doing here. Getting to the Hall of Elders is one of the coolest moments Iāve experienced from a game in a while. The scenery in general is so well designed it gives you a strong sense of place, making it so easy to just hang out and explore. Going back through areas you feel like you mastered it and have become a lot stronger through knowledge. Much Demonās Souls and Dark Souls, this is just a rare game that works for me despite having a lot of otherwise unpleasant drawbacks. Itās also not as punishing, so I think Iāll definitely see it through to the end.
Not to mention the synth music!!! Incredible synth!!!
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giving up on a remarkably aesthetically and mechanically repulsive game already huh
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Iām so envious. I love the 2d metroids but could never get into the 3d ones. I like other 3d search action games but for some reason that I cannot articulate, I have not liked the 3d metroid games. Even after playing all of them from stem to stern. I want to enjoy them like I see other people enjoying them but I have some sort of block. All the peices of gameplay and level design donāt work for me. I like the art style and the lock on shooting but thatās it. I want to love them. I love metroid as a brand. The first game birthed my love of my favorite genre, the search action game. I played the remake and felt the same way. I need reincarnation to be real then maybe Iāll love it in my next life.
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You really got my hopes up with that description but alas itās not repulsive enough.
Metroid Prime rules! Iām glad youāre having a good time. This is the metroid game that most successfully invites the player into Samusā perspective as a more realized character, while still retaining mystery and atmosphere. Other games have tried to accomplish the same feat but overdid it, like Fusion, Other M, and Dread.
I happen to like all the scan stuff, it does a tremendous job of briefly giving the environment some context, but leaves a lot to the imagination. Spoiler/hint about scanning: the important stuff to scan has a red icon in the scan visor, everything else has a pale orange one. If thereās something in the environment that is relevant to puzzle solving or progression, itāll have the red icon.
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Yeah! What I mean is I do like scanning ā even when itās just the pale orange environmental flavor text like āTemperature stable. Radiation levels of subject are low.ā Even though itās trying to be a very lonely experience, that flavor text connects you to a larger world outside of yourself. Thereās even sometimes foreshadowing in there which can hint at how to defeat enemies. For example, one very helpful computer in the Research Center hinted I should go into morph ball mode if a metroid grabs me, which I would not have seen if I wasnāt reading all that stuff!
Meanwhile in something like Dark Souls Iām less inclined to dig in to read the weapon descriptions or soapstone comments (though thatās slightly different because itās user generated content) and just focus on my actions and story dialogue.
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Appreciate hearing your insight on FF VI PR. They mostly used the GBA script, which I thought was a good tune up when it released. Iāll forever be very slightly miffed when blogs/videos/what-have-you use the newest screenshots when talking about the game historically, but FFIV had many more permutations and came out stronger for it.
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I started the year with beating Dark Souls 2 for both the first and second time. My first playthrough was Scholar of the First Sin on the PS4 back in 2015 or 2016. This recent playthrough was the original version on my Steam Deck. I used to say that I thought that Dark Souls 2 was better than Dark Souls 1, but only slightly. I think Dark Souls 2 is still more consistent then Dark Souls 1. I find the quality of DS1 really falls off after Anor Londo. Instead of DS1 going from great to meh DS2 stays a consistent level of just okay.
Iāve now been bouncing back and forth between Kingdom Come: Deliverance and GTA IV. Iāve been streaming Kingdom Come with Geforce Now and playing GTA IV on the Steam Deck.
GTA IV on the Deck feels like the definitive console version. The visuals can be increased higher than the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 were capable of all while keeping at what feels like a solid 30fps. I havenāt played through GTA IV ever since my first time on the PS3 in I think 2010 or 2011. I had a playthrough going on the Xbox Series S but that console is at my partnerās place. In a lot of ways I like GTA IV more than V as time has gone on. I think the writing and plot of IV is more consistent and generally of a higher quality than V. I appreciate that GTA V does not take itself so seriously, but I love the grime and groundedness of GTA IV the way I love it in Red Dead Redemption 1 & 2.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance is a game I bought back it came out in 2018. I played it on my PS4 Pro, got maybe 15-20 hours into it and ended up falling off it. Iāve heard good things about the sequel so I wanted to give it another shot. Something I loved about Kingdom Come back then and now is the world design. The villages and urban centers have this distinct lived in quality. The world has this way of sucking me in and I just want to walk around and look at stuff. The forests and countryside are also spellbinding. It gives me a similar feeling to how I felt walking around the wilderness of Velen and Novigrad in Witcher 3. I also really like the writing and the story gripped me again. My partner was watching me play and ended up sitting with me because she was interested too. Playing on Geforce Now has been impressive. My desktop can run the game just fine on high and over 100fps but I wanted to play in the living room and I have been paying for Geforce Now anyway for when I eventually get to Indiana Jones. The input lag and response time doesnāt feel like I am playing a game running in a data center.
After these games are done I may get around to finishing Persona 3 Reload, but I found Iāve mostly lost interest in it. I may just make myself finish it so I can say I have. I really want to start playing Metaphor. It has been sitting in my library and all I have done is play up until you get to the city.
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Keep Driving is really very good. Great game for chilling and reflecting , varying levels of intensity throughout. Lots of room to project your own memories and feelings into everything. I just got done playing it for a good chunk of time. Iāve gone cross country twice. I used a pick up truck the first time and a sedan the second, and they led to some pretty different results. The truck was all about trunk space, and the sedan was all about passenger space, which allowed for more hitchhikers. I could tell you all about the pros and cons as you make your decision between passenger space and trunk space, but I donāt want to come across as a car salesman.
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