they’re calling Promise Mascot Agency the new Crysis
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Started and saw through The Roottrees are Dead this weekend. It was… alright? The genealogy framework itself makes for some satisfying spatial and logical leaps. Felt like there was a good mix of wide and narrow research doorways to get at the valuable info.
The dialogue, showing the whole blank board, giving out all the names, etc undermines a sense of a mystery unfurling. For a game exclusively about researching people there isn’t much character so much as hairlines and occupations. Was enjoyable as a workbook of problems but otherwise not terribly engrossing.
The simulation aesthetic is cool for separating different categories of info, but I wish it was less front loaded. You’re not gaining many new programs or avenues of research later in the game. There aren’t nearly enough breakthrough moments where you uncover a rich vein and get to re-filter old concepts through it. It’s also a poor mix to have a simulated computer, web browser, and search engine that frequently returns results in the game designer’s voice. I get summarizing websites instead of writing scores of chaff, but messages like “This has nothing to do with your task”, jokes, and other direct messages to the player breaks up too much. I’m here to sort and process information – get out of here!
In short, Hypnospace Outlaw and Obra Dinn are very cool.
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Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter might not be the straightforwardly best Breath of Fire game, but it is the coolest one. An absolute banging way to spend like 20 hours, or less, or even maybe more, if you want, in either direction.
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Oh my god. Holy shit. This one gets bruuuuutal towards the end. Good thing I set aside the whole day for it lol… Finally on the other side though. And honestly while the sudden cruelty does kinda alter my perception it’s still definitely one of the best. Stuck the landing excellently and never lost sight of its still-revolutionary vision. Just a little harder to boldly recommend to people now, lol. Guess I really gotta play Landstalker after loving this so much, but only once I’m mentally recovered from this final stretch that shit got mean!!!
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Galvanized by the media coverage of the sequel, I played through this extensively last month. I am absolutely a sucker for the Elder Scrolls style gameplay loop and I found this very difficult to put down. I recall @yeso at some point saying they thought the writing was bad, and I’d broadly agree with that. I would at least say it is uneven, there are certainly some high points particularly in the main story. But there is also a lot of drudgery, predictable plot beats and weird incongruities. The game has a long runtime but I didn’t really feel that any of the characters had meaningful arcs. The story just kind of happens to them and they don’t learn or change as a result.
Also, and perhaps I am being uncharitable because I was aware of some of the discourse surrounding these games prior to going in, I felt that the writers used “historical accuracy” as an excuse to portray transgressive/offensive things. Of course people were misogynists, homophobes, etc. back then, but the subtext of the game (to me) is that this is funny, rather than being misguided. Female characters are poorly represented, people of colour are completely absent[1], the main antagonist heavily implied to be homosexual.
Both the “historical accuracy” and “medieval simulation” aspects of this are overblown, I was expecting a lot more in that department from what I had read. It really just feels like Skyrim without magic and fewer caves. You can still carry around dozens of suits of armour, drink potions to heal mortal wounds, etc. It’s much more strict around combat though, tougher for sure and you can still get taken out by a group of barely armed bandits in the late game if you’re not careful.
Criticisms aside though, as I said before I am a sucker for Skyrimlikes. I had a lot of fun with emergent experiences in this. The world itself is beautifully crafted - particularly the patches of woodland. I played it through a second time, a no-kill run in hardcore mode with all negative perks (achievement hunting) and enjoyed it immensely. In hardcore, you have no fast travel and a very limited map (you can view the map but there is no indication where you are, and not even a compass). By the end of the game I was intimately familiar with the geography of the world in a way that I have not experienced often in games, to the point where I was using natural landmarks like ponds, oddly fallen trees etc. to navigate.
In one quest I found myself being chased around a silver mine by a guy with a bow and a sword. Even when I ran away, he would doggedly pursue me and start taking potshots. There were other aggressive miners around, but they were content to engage in fist fights which I could handle (I was doing no kills remember) - only if I stuck around too long the other guy caught up! The mines are a total maze, every tunnel looks the same and I took a wrong turn to a dead end with an angry miner. I start fisticuffs and before long the armed guy turns up, I keep the miner between him and me so he can’t shoot me but he eventually closes in and draws his sword. I’m really low on health at this point, very close to death and haven’t saved in a while (no autosaves in hardcore). I punch him in the face and, unbelievably, immediately knock him out! He goes down like a sack of potatoes! I fight the other guy too and eventually win, then steal the first guy’s weapons so he won’t be a threat when he comes to and then limp my way to the exit. I had a particular perk in my character that sometimes KOs people when you hit them in the head, but the odds are really low - particularly against armoured opponents. I had procced it only a handful of times in the game up to that point. It’s hard to convey how exhilarating that moment was, and I had quite a few similarly fun emergent experiences in the game that made it worthwhile for me.
I will probably play the second one eventually, but I am certainly burned out on that style of game for now. I’m thinking I’ll go straight for hardcore when I do play it.
[1]. I know I don’t need to say this here but I don’t buy that this is historically accurate and even if it is I don’t care.
7 Likes
Do you think they’ll ever release Breathe of Fire: Dragon Dollar?
My real reply is man I’ve been thinking about that game everyday ever since you played it. The ant colony is interesting.
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As a medievalist, I have not played the game largely for this reason. I don’t expect historical accuracy from games set in the medieval period. But, based on the developer’s comments and what I’ve read about the game, it commits a few errors simultaneously: it states it aims for historical accuracy while freely eschewing it for the sake of game mechanics; the “historical accuracy” it espouses is a postmedieval white European fantasy version of it (not just in the treatment of women, sexuality, and race, but even in its nationalist depiction of Czechs versus Cumans and Hungarians); it actually seems to support this postmedieval white European fantasy, rather than being noncommital, nuanced, or critical of it.
It’s the sort of game I could play if I felt its developers were trying in good faith to do something and they had fallen short. As you describe the Skyrimlike aspects of it in the next paragraph, it’s the kind of game I might like if the discourse and the (described) execution of the game did not get in the way.
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Yeah, I’d say your appraisal is 100% correct - your perspective has definitely helped me understand/solidify my dissatisfaction with that aspect of the game.
1 Like
yeah in addition to it being a-historically white and Christian - and this observation is coming not from the well-informed perspective of @Taliesin_Merlin , just from having read like one actual book (The Rise of the West which is itself old and not woke or anything) on the subject could see through the insistence on “accuracy” - that insistence was just cover for being lame and served to make unimaginative and rote characters and plot events seem to have greater significance than they merited. In truth it’s a lot of done-to-death stuff. I like the setting, it looks good, and I appreciate the sense of place. Maybe the sequel is a lot better idk
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As always, the people throwing around the term “historical accuracy” know less about the actual history than a person on the street picked at random. They just want to live out a mythical fascist fantasy that reincorces all the shitty things they believe about people who don’t look exactly like them
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I thought I was reading the contrarian thread about final fantasy 7 for a second and got shook
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played through chapter 4 of Yakuza Kiwami 2 and back to kamurocho i go already. i was only just hired to manage club four shine on the cabaret grand prix but i barely got that started
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got through Anzio and on to Operation Dragoon (not commonly portrayed in media) in Burden Of Command. Think I’ll have to put this on my GOTY list when all is said and done. There’s a clever and effective ebb and flow in terms of challenge and tactical variety based on who you’re fighting off against ( 0% motivation Vichy guys, 15% motivation Italian guys, 100% motivation German guys, and now in early phases of Dragoon 0% motivation Ostlegionen schmucks) - you really feel the danger of those mg42s in each wehrmacht squad, and of course you fear the tigers. Good portrayal I think of the variability of supply lines and times when you’re hindered and times when you have the advantage. Also praiseworthy - the extended curve of your troops gradually getting more competent and skilled on the battlefield, and how losses and then replacement troops will then pull your squads performances back down. You really get a sense of being new to combat then gradually building veteran competence. The tutorial is still maybe overdoing it and inelegant as I wrote before, but it does create a feeling of having to throw out the manual to learn the real shit. It’s a neat effect. A couple other takeaways -
- tank stuff is OK but less detailed than infantry, and you can see times where the design doesnt quite accommodate them, meaning that the map geometry will sometimes pen them into a certain area. Not a huge dealbreaker or anything
- The writing remains much more competent than is typical I would say in video games in general. Not spectacular or anything but reliably competent and made with obvious care and investment.
- if anyone else plays this please lmk if you figure out a way to meet The Pope. I tried for several days but had no success
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On my journey to roll credits on every official Metroid game and all I have left is Federation Force. I wanted to believe that this was a hidden gem or something, but I fired it up tonight and I don’t think this is going to be a good video game.
So far the combat is generally fun, when there’s combat. It actually plays a little like classic prime, not hunters, but the levels in between are mega slog.
The story is funny though, the space pirates have a make-you-big ray that makes you big, and now there’s big space pirates
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To be honest I only beat Chapter 3 and then put it down! Up to that point you can tell the combat doesn’t have much depth but it doesn’t hinder the experience much either. I just haven’t gotten back to it yet, even though now my interest is piqued by Promise Mascot Agency, Blue Prince, and the inaugural Suikoden challenge run. Meanwhile the actual game I’m playing and 2/3rds of the way through is Xenoblade Chronicles X.
Last week I had a frustrating couple days at work, then a terrible night sleep because of a dying fire alarm battery going off at 3 AM, so in a delirious and headache induced daze I fell back into the comfort of a chore-style open world checklistathon gameplay. Despite not really understanding a third of the mechanics, I’m still having a good time with XCX. I got my skell!
Despite still not really caring about the story, I think Chapter 8 when the aliens start attacking New Los Angeles is actually a cool set piece. I didn’t really expect it to happen so soon, and while it didn’t seem to have a lasting impact on the world, it was still fun to see a familiar location in a new way. But even after beating that, I still have to grind up a few levels and complete some affinity quests before the next mission. They really want you to put in the work to make any progress in the story.
However, having the skell is fantastic. The new traversal method really changes how you’re able to interact with the world. So many times the follow ball would lead me to a jump I couldn’t make or path through overpowered enemies who would attack me. Now I can just hop skip and jump over them to get to my next destination. It is absolutely worth rushing to obtain it for the exploration alone. It’s also strong in battle too, and transformative in the way you approach tough bosses. Now I feel like I can approach battles with more strategy, and being able to take off the suit mid-fight allows you to over-extend in a good way. Now I’m fighting enemies who are 7-8 levels above me, instead of just ones that are 3-4 levels above me.
But for all the talk about how Xenoblade is secretly a mech game… it’s double-secretly a furry game.
Double Secret
These character designs are crazy, you have a lion with a 69 on its chest…
A covid-conscious catgirl…
and a weird bald bondage alien named ‘ryyz’ (pronounced ‘Rizz’) with something coming out of her breasts?
Maybe this game just as horny as Xenoblade 2. However unlike that game, this one doesn’t make you care about the enemy psyche or what motivates them, which feels like a missed opportunity.
The tone of this game is off-kilter but endearing in its own way.
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I’m not ready to write an update on Xenoblade Chronicles X but I’m enjoying reading other people’s posts.
I am curious if anyone recalls how long it took them before getting the Skell? I’m taking my time with this game so I got my first Skell around the 28 hour mark.
Mind I’m not complaining - I like the fact that you have to really work to obtain it.
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25-30 hours is about right for me too. Partially because I didn’t quite understand how to get enough money from FrontierNav (turns out it’s much faster to remove mining rigs rather than try to find more treasures and collect research rigs)
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Okay I’d imagine it would be similar for everyone else seeing as the game doesn’t really let you rush through the main story quests.
Yeah it’s hard to come by research probes - but you can get a lot by sticking one is a high revenue location and attach a duplicator with. Either way it feels like it’s easier to earn money in this version. I struggled with cash when it originally released.
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I just finished Kiwami 2, I think I got like ten chapters in before I realized you can just take a taxi back to Sotenbori whenever you want. I wound up just grinding through the entire Cabaret club storyline over the course of a week
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