What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

[Blinge]

Most of the cheese comes from using a bow and sniping down unresponsive enemies which at times is alright, but at certain moments I really wished some of those enemies would react in some form.

*ahem*
While that's a good point Square, no one's forcing you to play like that.

Sorry but to me being a defensive tank and poking from behind shield is legit enough, but totally ruined by taking your bow out. That moves to the realm of deliberate cheesing and if you think it ruins the game, stop doing it.

I feel like it's reasonable to criticize the game for certain shortcomings while using my chosen build. While I'm against using completely stupid exploits in games, Dark Souls presented itself as this balls to the walls beast and I get my enjoyment out of conquering these sections as efficiently as possible.

I get my enjoyment by fighting melee only. If bow-cheesing is more enjoyable for you then I don't understand why you'd complain about it either. Do yourself a favour and drop ranged attacks completely in the next souls game you play. I did that for DS1 and 2 and had a blast.
Hm, i don't think the actual game portrays itself as balls to the walls, that'd be Namco's marketing and internet hype/memes.

Edit: I think I understand the sort of experience you'd like to have when using a bow maybe?
Like using a ranged weapon in Monster Hunter - sitting down and blasting away, but having to evade very quickly cause the monster will hit back/quickly close the distance and force you to be smart about your play. It gives a feeling of tension for sure. However this is only do-able cause the hunting zones are enclosed little arenas.

[Bananamatic]

bow cheesing worked just fine in dks2, it might actually be even better due to how strong poison is
makes sotfs iron keep 1000x easier

as long as the enemies either have limited aggro zones you can stay out of or are slow, cheesing with long range will always work without fail

[Stevens]

After much much much anticipation of who awaited me in Anor Londo (a buddy kept telling me - "Wait till you meet Ornstein and Smough") I have to say that they did not disappoint.

10 or so tries in that had me dead soon after the fight started I kept my distance (I think I ran the equivalent of a half marathon around that room) , rolled when I needed to, blocked when I had to and started picking my openings. I didn't care who I hit and at one point they were both at 50%.

I only had to hit Ornstein five or six times before he dropped (BKS+5 is like 330). I had no estus left for the 2nd part of the fight, but Smough never touched me.

Fight lived up to the hype - It was a fast and hectic affair.

Resting in the painting.

[guigui]

Glad you enjoyed the O&S fight, it is a legendary one.

[Mischief Maker]

Thanks to Starbound, that tiny spark of hope deep within me that No Man's Sky would one day be patched into something decent is forever quashed. I now understand what they've been aiming for with their bizarre content update choices and it is dire.

Grind your ass off for hours to climb an equipment tier and get rewarded with a single set level of watered-down action gameplay. Then do it over and over and over again.

It's rune factory all over again. They lure me in with the promise of an action RPG then SURPRISE! It's a goddamn farming game.

The music is nice.

[Square_Air]

Most of the cheese comes from using a bow and sniping down unresponsive enemies which at times is alright, but at certain moments I really wished some of those enemies would react in some form.

*ahem*
While that's a good point Square, no one's forcing you to play like that.

I obviously have no obligations to play video games at all and do everything voluntarily. I'm not sure why you felt the need to repeat this when I have already stated that on my next playthrough I would try something different to understand how the other classes deal with threats.

Sorry but to me being a defensive tank and poking from behind shield is legit enough, but totally ruined by taking your bow out. That moves to the realm of deliberate cheesing and if you think it ruins the game, stop doing it.

I completely disagree with your first point. The bow is a fantastic addition to the tools of the Knight class so you can deal with necromancers, toxic blowdart snipers, etc. It allows you to position yourself and summon enemies to you without giving up the tactical advantage of your location. Since magic was not going to fit with my build, the bow was such an obvious choice from the start since it would scale with the stats I was already raising. Why you think adding range to a character that suffers due to lack of range illegitimizes my build is beyond me.

The reasons I did not immediately drop bows entirely were that I did not notice how nasty the bow could be until Sen's Fortress/Anor Londo, there weren't anywhere near enough opportunities to cheese that would make me consider it broken, it was a great convenience, and its utility was invaluable in sections where the developers built the stages and enemies around utilizing the bow.

The bows in Dark Souls are not on the same level as hooking yourself to a spike in Terraria to abuse the I-frames from the constant damage to effectively be invulnerable in your battle against the Moon Lord (thank god they patched this out). Nor is it like having prior knowledge of the trigger locations for scripted events in Half-Life to make very narrow shots around specific corners to take out a HECU soldier without the squad responding (uncommon to discover on your first playthrough, and a rarity overall). I used the bow for its deliberate function of taking out enemies from a distance. When I fire an arrow at the Knight on top of Sen's fortress from a mere 50 feet away (with only flat ground between us, in clear view and in broad daylight) and it refuses to acknowledge my existence, this is no fault of my own. This would be unacceptable for 1998, let alone in this current decade from such a high profile game. Saying that this is "deliberate cheesing" is kind of silly.

The opportunities to cheese with the bow got old fast and at times I would restrain myself from using it. The point of my statement wasn't to say that Dark souls is poorly designed because you can cheese with the bows (I think Dark Souls is magnificently designed in certain aspects), it was to say that the developers bit off more than they could chew with all the variety the game offers and released a game with features that had not been properly tested.

[Blinge]

I completely disagree with your first point. The bow is a fantastic addition to the tools of the Knight class so you can deal with necromancers, toxic blowdart snipers, etc.

Any build in the game can use a bow to gradually plink enemies to death or bait them, it's not a class thing.
The one point against this is that dex based classes -wanderer/thief etc benefit more from bow as they'll have better damage.
Though it doesn't make a huge difference with bows iirc.

You know what's cool? Carving through the skeletons with your blade or rushing past them to deliver final inevitable deathhhh to the neros unff.

It allows you to position yourself and summon enemies to you without giving up the tactical advantage of your location. Since magic was not going to fit with my build, the bow was such an obvious choice from the start since it would scale with the stats I was already raising. Why you think adding range to a character that suffers due to lack of range illegitimizes my build is beyond me.

Yeah, don't take my words too harshly - you can play the game how you want. The only reason i used 'legit' is because "knight" says heavy armour melee slugger to me; subjectively. If you prefer to make up the range shortfall by using a bow then fair enough.. but it seems odd to do so then complain about it.

Would the game be better to you if they removed bows as you can no longer 'cheese'?

Personally using bow to draw enemies to you is far less cheesy than killing from a distance, you hadn't made it clear you were using it this way until your latest post.

its utility was invaluable in sections where the developers built the stages and enemies around utilizing the bow.

That's a bold claim. Evidence? From your later arguments it seems the games areas weren't built around using the bow..

When I fire an arrow at the Knight on top of Sen's fortress from a mere 50 feet away (with only flat ground between us, in clear view and in broad daylight) and it refuses to acknowledge my existence, this is no fault of my own.

Yeah that blows, I didn't know it got that bad.

[Square_Air]

Yeah, don't take my words too harshly - you can play the game how you want. The only reason i used 'legit' is because "knight" says heavy armour melee slugger to me; subjectively. If you prefer to make up the range shortfall by using a bow then fair enough.. but it seems odd to do so then complain about it.

Would the game be better to you if they removed bows as you can no longer 'cheese'?

Thank you. Truth is, I would rather them not remove bows entirely as I would miss them. The bow was such a nice addition to my tool set and there are honestly some sections where using a bow is both useful and fun. It's just that I can't ignore the parts where it feels like they designed areas without considering bows at all. Funny enough, there's also a ring that increases the range of your bow that I never even used, so the devs actively encouraged long range combat, but fell short in building sections that were even meant to function with such combat. It's a letdown for me, and I speak about its flaws out of a place of wanting to improve an aspect of the game that at times felt really cool. While I think it would be asking to much for them to design a game perfectly around every diverse style of combat (few games can do this properly, and often have less diverse options), I feel like there needed to be more adjustments before the game was released.

its utility was invaluable in sections where the developers built the stages and enemies around utilizing the bow.

That's a bold claim. Evidence? From your later arguments it seems the games areas weren't built around using the bow..

Blighttown. First positive, there are much less things you can cheese. Sure, there's a few very long rang enemies you can snipe across the "elevated boardwalk" and some cragspiders to take out, but beyond that everything else is pretty nice. Because the design of the boardwalk uses the 3d space really well with overlapping horizontal and vertical sections, when you shoot your first arrow and all of the ghouls come to chase after you, they zigzag all around your field of view as they scale the obstacles around them. Add this in with the darkness and you get an interesting, tense, and rewarding shooting gallery. You know that you only have a few seconds to kill/chip the ghouls before they inevitably reach you, and you feel more gratification as the shots can be really difficult to land on these targets in the dark that are running behind cover half of the time. Since the boardwalk itself in upper Blighttown is possibly your biggest enemy in the entire section, as a melee character being able to actually choose where I would fight the ghouls was amazing. Instead of running into the darkness and haphazardly getting knocked off, it felt like I actually had a way to level the playing field against such treacherous terrain. It was still challenging, but it felt good. The bow felt like the right tool for the job and my choice in having it as my secondary weapon over another melee felt validated.

I already mentioned the toxic blowdart snipers, but I really can't stress enough how useful the bow was here. Since I played such a thick tank I wasn't used to the idea of something being able to kill me in silence without being able to see it. The first sniper really blew me back. At times they could be frustrating, though I understand this was 100% by design and I wouldn't change it. It's part of Blighttown's charm. Being able to trade blows with them across a distance was much less frustrating than trying to rush through platforms of enemies while dying of toxic to try and take out the sniper at close range. Blighttown was much more about patience and tactics than speed. It punishes you for being to brash if you think you can rush through every obstacle. This pacing of the area fit much better with the slower and more tactical style that the bow provides. Knowing that there were nearly invisible snipers that didn't care about how great my defenses and shield were put me on edge, and gave my bow importance as it was the weapon that could save my life.

The last major point is what finally sold me on the bow being one of the most essential tools for getting me through Blighttown, and that's dealing with the giant mosquitoes. These things don't care about solid objects, and often just phase right through them, and always seem to be positioned at odd heights where you're unable to take them until you herd them to a better location (which can be a pain sometimes when you have little boardwalk to work with). You can just bop these pests out of the sky like it's fucking Ocarina Of Time. I felt gleeful when I realized how perfect the bow is for these mosquitoes when you don't use magic.

When I fire an arrow at the Knight on top of Sen's fortress from a mere 50 feet away (with only flat ground between us, in clear view and in broad daylight) and it refuses to acknowledge my existence, this is no fault of my own.

Yeah that blows, I didn't know it got that bad.

That section is probably the worst and not many get that bad. There are a few enemies that seem completely unaware of the concept of arrows being painful, I started trying to justify this to myself by saying things like "uhhh... I guess that arrow pierced his brain... which was in his left arm... and now he lost all of his critical thinking skills... and memories of childhood...".

[Bananamatic]

When I fire an arrow at the Knight on top of Sen's fortress from a mere 50 feet away (with only flat ground between us, in clear view and in broad daylight) and it refuses to acknowledge my existence, this is no fault of my own. This would be unacceptable for 1998, let alone in this current decade from such a high profile game. Saying that this is "deliberate cheesing" is kind of silly.

The opportunities to cheese with the bow got old fast and at times I would restrain myself from using it. The point of my statement wasn't to say that Dark souls is poorly designed because you can cheese with the bows (I think Dark Souls is magnificently designed in certain aspects), it was to say that the developers bit off more than they could chew with all the variety the game offers and released a game with features that had not been properly tested.

even if the knight acknowledged your existence, he would die to any long ranged attack before he could even reach you because anything slow is super easy to kite forever

the only solutions to avoid cheesing is to:
1) give enemies insane speed or gap closers so massive armored knights could do an anime dash or jump 200 meters ahead of them which would make the game even more retarded, or
2) give everyone long ranged attacks, which would make the game super annoying for any melee build

it's like playing ryu vs zangief in street fighter, except the arena has no walls so ryu can just retreat and hadouken forever
I really don't know what kind of reaction you're expecting from enemies in a slow game and how would you deal with it without fucking over melee builds entirely at the same time

[Blinge]

Oh dear. To quote Birru; this has become a theorypost nerdfight.

Add this in with the darkness and you get an interesting, tense, and rewarding shooting gallery. You know that you only have a few seconds to kill/chip the ghouls before they inevitably reach you, and you feel more gratification as the shots can be really difficult to land on these targets in the dark that are running behind cover half of the time.

This is equally evidence for why Blighttown is not designed for bow use.

Since the boardwalk itself in upper Blighttown is possibly your biggest enemy in the entire section, as a melee character being able to actually choose where I would fight the ghouls was amazing. Instead of running into the darkness and haphazardly getting knocked off, it felt like I actually had a way to level the playing field against such treacherous terrain.

You can do this without a bow, it's called moving forwards then retreating to more favourable ground. The enemies will give chase and you can take them out at your leisure if you don't wanna engage them all at once.

Your descriptive language is disingenuous: darkness/light levels don't factor into Blighttown really. You aren't running into darkness, you're just advancing into unknown territory - if you got knocked off, you failed at melee combat or.. staying on land.

I already mentioned the toxic blowdart snipers, but I really can't stress enough how useful the bow was here. Since I played such a thick tank I wasn't used to the idea of something being able to kill me in silence without being able to see it... Being able to trade blows with them across a distance was much less frustrating than trying to rush through platforms of enemies while dying of toxic to try and take out the sniper at close range.

omg THICC

You can see the darts being fired at you though, they practically glow in the dark. I mean it's possible to dodge each and every one if you just keep moving, they're aimed at you after all.
Wouldn't recommend that though because there's plenty of cover - The area was designed with safe spots where the snipers can't hit you. A melee player just has to make it to those parts and fight the locals there. On the descent into blighttown I think only two snipers are really problematic, that doesn't include the first one, and that's if they don't fall off and die by themselves as you move about.
The one at the very highest point above the wall-crawler thing can hit you as you try to cross the stone bridge, but it's a very short distance to cover to the shitpile and from there you won't be hit/see him again until you ascend a ladder right next to him for revenge.
Approach like this and you don't have to rush forward at all.

Blighttown was much more about patience and tactics than speed. It punishes you for being to brash if you think you can rush through every obstacle. This pacing of the area fit much better with the slower and more tactical style that the bow provides.

Well, I hope I've shown there's more to the game than simply rushing forward or playing 'tactical' by using a bow..

It seems to me that you saw the bow as the answer to your problems very early on and therefore start seeing the game as built around the bow.
Your post seems to suggest that only bow is the tactical approach. If you aren't implying that then fine.

The last major point is what finally sold me on the bow being one of the most essential tools for getting me through Blighttown, and that's dealing with the giant mosquitoes...These things don't care about solid objects, and often just phase right through them...You can just bop these pests out of the sky like it's fucking Ocarina Of Time. I felt gleeful when I realized how perfect the bow is for these mosquitoes when you don't use magic.

Yeah they're piss annoying, i'll give this one to the bow for sure. They don't phase through solid objects though as they can get stuck in the floor beneath you (and stop being a threat). It is awkward as hell trying to use an upwards swing to finally hit them with melee, but I usually do this because i'm stubborn or just ignore them as they keep spawning.

[Squire Grooktook]

RE: Dark Souls

I don't feel like going over all this, but as I said to Blinge last night, I think it's valid to claim that one playstyle might not be as fun as all the others, but it's a really nitpicky complaint and to be completely expected when there are so many of them.

You could claim "well maybe they should have left less options in and spent more time on one or two", but that's like hardcore arcadey action game territory, not a diverse and huge action rpg. Eliminating options would take away some of the games toybox appeal.

Thanks to Starbound, that tiny spark of hope deep within me that No Man's Sky would one day be patched into something decent is forever quashed. I now understand what they've been aiming for with their bizarre content update choices and it is dire.

Grind your ass off for hours to climb an equipment tier and get rewarded with a single set level of watered-down action gameplay. Then do it over and over and over again.

It's rune factory all over again. They lure me in with the promise of an action RPG then SURPRISE! It's a goddamn farming game.

The music is nice.

Are you talking about Starbound or NMS here? A friend of mine made me play Starbound once, with a bunch of mods. I still hated the wonky controls (moving faster forward than back has no place in sidescrolling anything).


-


As for myself, I've mostly been enjoying the personal adventure storytelling and intense character development of table top rpg's. I'm in two games right now, both Japanese. The emphasis on speed and streamlined gameplay in Japanese rpg's is as present in pen and paper rpg's as it is the console variant, and here I find it immensely appealing.

Nechronica is still my main of the two games I'm in. As I've mentioned before, it's about being a tormented cyber/bio-weapon clinging to survival in post-apoctalyptic hell for the amusement of your insane demiurgic creator. To the surprise of other players who recognize how grimdark the setting is, my characters idealism and compassion is sloooowly seeming to make a difference even as she struggles to maintain those qualities.

Last session a giant mutant dog bit my head off during the boss fight. I responded by turning into a mass of Protoplasm and absorbing said doge The Thing style before slithering off to build a cocoon and regenerate my face. From the experience. I adaptively evolved the ability to turn my blood (and tears) into crystals (which is one of the best defensive abilities in the game). Said crystal tears were immediately put to use when she realized that the aforementioned headchomp had destroyed her mother's pendant, one of her only treasures and a constant reminder that she was once human (such reminders are also an important gameplay mechanic, btw).

The rest of the party did not notice this because they were too busy tearing eachothers eyes out from too much sanity damage (not inflicted by me, though). Thankfully, those can be replaced.

I love this game.


Have been playing a bit of Nioh on ps4. Pretty good. Have a hard time getting my feels up for any souls style game that isn't Bloodborne though these days.

[Stevens]

Haven't used any bows/crossbows at all so I can't comment.

I have more of a speedy/light tank build.

Elite Knight armor and leggings with Silver Knight helm and gauntlets. The armor and leggings I have upgraded the shit out of - they have served me very well to this point. Usually carry the Green Crest shield for the stamina boost, but just picked up the Blood shield and have it on me just in case I need resistance.

I've been using the Black Knight's sword for almost 75% of my play through, but have started forging the Great Club.

Just started exploring the Duke's Archives.

[Bananamatic]

I mean it's possible to dodge each and every one if you just keep moving, they're aimed at you after all.

if there's anything "bullshit" in dark souls, it's the fact that enemy projectiles aren't aimed, they're literally homing, even the arrow shots
just wait for something to fire an arrow from a distance, try to sidestep it a little and watch it bend in midair and get hit

you can just run through everything in blighttown anyways, just spend all your souls and suicide dash as far as you can
the mosquitoes aren't even worth fighting, you can just ignore them and move on
like 90% of enemies in the whole game

[Squire Grooktook]

the mosquitoes aren't even worth fighting, you can just ignore them and move on
like 90% of enemies in the whole game

One of my biggest true complaints in the series. Even in Bloodborne, a 1 life clear is often safer running away from enemies once you know the layouts. Wish it had a bit more pressure.

[mamboFoxtrot]

In my experience that's the case for pretty much any 3D hack 'n slash that's more open ended than a narrow hallway.

[Bananamatic]

except souls isn't a hack n slash but an RPG
stuff like devil may cry or bayonetta either locks the doors so you have to fight everything, or skipping fights results in an immediate fail rank
the amount of souls you get from non enemies is also pretty insignificant and a few levels don't affect much, plus the game is beatable just fine at level 1 so there is no need to fight anything extra

[Squire Grooktook]

I generally self impose myself to kill everything on the path from point a to point b in Bloodborne 1 life clear runs.

[Mischief Maker]

Majesty 1 is one of my favorite games of all time, but Majesty 2 was a huge disappointment in huge part because it stripped the hero AI and turned the game into a very awkward RTS/tower defense esque thing. But it's got fantastic music.

Well the other day I got a hankering to give M2 another try and in searching for a solution to the missing eshop DLC discovered that the fix has a companion balance patch that improves the game by leaps and bounds with tweaks to the hero AI that makes them way more active like in the first game.

It's still way more hands-on than the original, but I can say with confidence if you have this balance patch Majesty 2 is finally "good."

Here's the missing DLC fix required by the balance patch.

And here's the balance patch itself. Note that both of these are for "Majesty 2 Collection" which you can get on steam and gog.

[Square_Air]

Oh dear. To quote Birru; this has become a theorypost nerdfight.

Video game design is very serious business. This is a no fun zone.

This is equally evidence for why Blighttown is not designed for bow use.

I described how the bow was useful and fun in Blighttown without being the cheesiest strat in the game. The design of the rest of game leads me to believe using a bow in Blighttown was not considered in development, but it ends up working by accident. There are many areas in the game that either provide no challenge for the bow, or little viable use at all, so I don't understand why avoiding both of these main problems is a bad thing. The portion of the post you cherry picked was more about how the bow is fun to use in comparison to taking down unresponsive enemies.

You can do this without a bow, it's called moving forwards then retreating to more favourable ground. The enemies will give chase and you can take them out at your leisure if you don't wanna engage them all at once.

Your descriptive language is disingenuous: darkness/light levels don't factor into Blighttown really. You aren't running into darkness, you're just advancing into unknown territory - if you got knocked off, you failed at melee combat or.. staying on land.

This was more so directed towards a first time playthrough, of course there are other methods to deal with these problems. I would argue the darkness is a factor on the first playthrough as it stop you from getting a good look at your surroundings which can lead to more difficult confrontations. Having knowledge of the map really takes the edge off of Blighttown and makes the best solution on subsequent playthroughs just running past everything, like the majority of the game. The blowdart snipers are much more intimidating when you don't know which direction to take to dispatch them, or how many there are littered around the boardwalk.

Well, I hope I've shown there's more to the game than simply rushing forward or playing 'tactical' by using a bow..

It seems to me that you saw the bow as the answer to your problems very early on and therefore start seeing the game as built around the bow.
Your post seems to suggest that only bow is the tactical approach. If you aren't implying that then fine.

I don't believe I implied this at all. To think that bows are the only tactical choice is just silly. If anything the bow requires very little thought throughout most of the game, but Blighttown shows some of the potential the bows had if the game was better designed around them, regardless if that was the developers intention. I don't think it's ridiculous to expect a game to be designed around its features, obviously i'm going to judge how the bow works with the rest of the game.

even if the knight acknowledged your existence, he would die to any long ranged attack before he could even reach you because anything slow is super easy to kite forever

This is still better than enemies being completely unresponsive.

I really don't know what kind of reaction you're expecting from enemies in a slow game and how would you deal with it without fucking over melee builds entirely at the same time

I already addressed this.

While I think it would be asking to much for them to design a game perfectly around every diverse style of combat (few games can do this properly, and often have less diverse options), I feel like there needed to be more adjustments before the game was released.

That being said, I don't know why you're so averse to possible changes in Dark Souls. The game has a lot of room for improvement, and a good amount of changes wouldn't need to be so drastic. Any form of kiting is better than enemies not giving a shit, even if it hardly changes the overall experience.

the only solutions to avoid cheesing is to:
1) give enemies insane speed or gap closers so massive armored knights could do an anime dash or jump 200 meters ahead of them which would make the game even more retarded, or
2) give everyone long ranged attacks, which would make the game super annoying for any melee build

I don't see why these have to be the only changes, but honestly.... both of these suggestions sound really fun... I know it wasn't your intention, but having a few more enemies that are better at gap closing or more effective at ranged battles seems really exciting to me. The entire game doesn't need to be built like this, but adding more effective enemies seems like a great idea to me.

the mosquitoes aren't even worth fighting, you can just ignore them and move on
like 90% of enemies in the whole game

I agree, this is such a flaw in this game for me. The most fun I had was when everything was new and every challenge needed to be assessed, and every area needed to be explored. On my NG+ playthrough the game loses a lot of its value when you can just roll right through all these areas while ignoring inconsequential enemies. The game could stand to be more challenging to returning players. If even just the NG+, or a hard mode, introduced new enemy tactics (anime leaps, more/better projectiles) it would vastly improve the experience in my eyes.

[wizkid]

been playing brogue, got to depth 13 so far.

[Blinge]

The design of the rest of game leads me to believe using a bow in Blighttown was not considered in development, but it ends up working by accident.

Your Blighttown paragraph was a direct response to my asking for evidence of stages "built around using the bow"!
I think that claim is simply wrong, and I've seen nothing to convince me otherwise.

I'm cherry picking? LOL, if you want me to dissect your 600 word B-town ramble quoting every sentence and responding to it I can, but I'm losing my patience tbh.

I responded to points I deemed problematic: I don't have much to argue about when you're calling sniping at B-town enemies an "interesting, intense and rewarding shooting gallery." That's entirely subjective. About points like this I felt no need to give an opinion but I will now: it sounds lame as fuck.

I would argue the darkness is a factor on the first playthrough as it stop you from getting a good look at your surroundings which can lead to more difficult confrontations.

Sure but the next boarded area you can walk onto at any point in B-town is pretty well lit. It's only the far away ground that is dark.

Having knowledge of the map really takes the edge off of Blighttown and makes the best solution on subsequent playthroughs just running past everything, like the majority of the game.

Yes prior knowledge of a game makes it easier, who would've thought?
Eh, why are we looking for 'best solutions,' I thought we play games for fun? You argued before you use bow partly because it's enjoyable to you..
My first choice is usually fight the enemies because it's a video game based on fighting enemies. Running through is for times i'm re-attempting a boss or special exceptions.

The blowdart snipers are much more intimidating when you don't know which direction to take to dispatch them, or how many there are littered around the boardwalk.

I can see that. However their darts glow in the dark making them much easier to understand. It's only the higher up one in the second tower that's a real problem as I've said before. Also there aren't many directions to take really.. other than the forward march of progress. The second shitpile tower is confusing, yes.. but once you're in it you can't be hit by darts in like, 90% of it. You'll either find the sniper by exploring eventually, or make your way downwards to safety anyway. That's assuming he doesn't chuck himself off and die which is quite likely.

As for the whole discussion: Yes, it's a shame the game doesn't cater more to your preferred method of play, oh well.

[Sumez]

I wanted to weigh in on the Souls-game AI talk, but have been using only my phone for the past week, so it's difficult for me to type out long responses, and now the debate seems to be all but worn out, with the same arguments repeating themselves.

Still, I'll say that I don't think you can really criticize the AI in the first Dark Souls. The game is still the best of the bunch in my book, and I don't see what the enemies would gain from being "smarter". It's a designed game with different kinds of monsters with different attack patterns. So what if you can cheese them? Doing so still requires a lot of knowledge of the area's design and how the enemies behave. Imagine if Medusa heads had AI and tried to trick you. Being able to anticipate their movements is what makes them a well designed obstacle.
Going in for the first time, you will always be completely in the dark about what to expect, which to me is a huge part of the appeal of Dark Souls. And being able to learn each area and master it so well that I can plow through it later is fun to me. If you want to cheese it, that's fine, and if you want to cheese it using a boring-as-shit method of peeling minor tick damage off enemies from a distance with your bow, you're only cheating yourself. I don't mind that the option is there, but I do think the Souls games went overboard with different options and weapon types.

I generally self impose myself to kill everything on the path from point a to point b in Bloodborne 1 life clear runs.

Makes sense in a "1 life clear run" (dear god, you're insane. I wish I had your skillz), but I'm really glad the games leave this option for you. I never really started to make use of it until Bloodborne (ie. the fourth game in the "series"), but when you repeatedly get your ass handed to you in one particular area far from a checkpoint, it's really nice that there is not a lot of risk involved in getting back there. Once again though, you still need knowledge of the stage layout and enemies to pull it off.

[Ji-L87]

Finally picked up VA-11 Hall-A and have been enjoying it immensely for the past few days.
I've been meaning to pick it up several times but always got distracted, now I remembered it's existence just before the steam sale. Also picked up the soundtracks off bandcamp.

Considering I've been in something of a cyberpunk mood the last few months (more than usual, anyway. Always up for some of that dystopian retro future) the game was the perfect thing to get.
Okay, I know there's more cyberpunk games out there that I'm totally going to check out some other time.

It was the coziest game I've played in a long time. Made me just want to sit up all night, having a drink and playing.
I guess the best part of it was the music, it just nailed the atmosphere. The pixel graphics were charming as well. Not perfect, but they don't have to be.

I'm guessing this game is old hat around here now but I'll recommend giving it a look while the sale lasts and if you don't mind the script being a bit meme-tastic. It feels very contemporary, for the lack of a better word.

[soprano1]

I guess the best part of it was the music, it just nailed the atmosphere.

https://garoad.bandcamp.com/album/va-11 ... the-future
https://garoad.bandcamp.com/album/va-11 ... cond-round
Enjoy!

[Ji-L87]

I guess the best part of it was the music, it just nailed the atmosphere.

https://garoad.bandcamp.com/album/va-11 ... the-future
https://garoad.bandcamp.com/album/va-11 ... cond-round
Enjoy!

Yeah, actually bought them right before picking up the game, further making me want to experience it
There's an acoustic remix of "Snowfall" in the game that doesn't seem to be in these soundtracks however.

[Square_Air]

This argument is getting pretty cyclical, so i'll try and tone it back a bit. It's clear that we have different opinions on how enjoyable it is to use the bow and can't seem to meet eye to eye on this. My point behind this was that bows had the potential to be more interesting in game than they ended up being.

Why I continued this Dark Souls bow discussion was due to the responses I received. It seems like many people here implied I 'played the game wrong' for using a bow at all. I can't agree with this sentiment. I shouldn't have to self impose a ruleset to be able to criticize a game. The fact that I could ignore the bow doesn't change the fact that this is a game with broken ranged combat. Just because you can play Vanilla Pokemon with different self imposed rulesets like nuzlocking or refraining from using healing items doesn't change the fact that Vanilla Pokemon is a complete design mess that doesn't take advantage of the wonderful options it has available.

The playstyle I chose early in the game and decided to stick with was in hindsight overall poorly designed, and I did not have the precognitive ability to avoid the bow before I had this experience. The fact that I could have changed my playstyle at any time doesn't make up for poor design choices. If the basic R1 from swords in Dark Souls stun locked the majority of enemies to the point of breaking the game I guarantee the discussion would be less about "why are you using cheese methods?" and more about "wow, this feature in this game is broken, the developers made a mistake". Of course I was trying to have fun with Dark Souls, and I certainly did have fun, but at no point did I feel like any secondary weapon gave me any sort of advantage that would be worth using at all, let alone outclassing the bow. I'm sure there's something that would have been a reasonable replacement, but I sure couldn't see it.

Yes prior knowledge of a game makes it easier, who would've thought?
Eh, why are we looking for 'best solutions,' I thought we play games for fun? You argued before you use bow partly because it's enjoyable to you..
My first choice is usually fight the enemies because it's a video game based on fighting enemies. Running through is for times i'm re-attempting a boss or special exceptions.

Imagine if Medusa heads had AI and tried to trick you. Being able to anticipate their movements is what makes them a well designed obstacle. Going in for the first time, you will always be completely in the dark about what to expect, which to me is a huge part of the appeal of Dark Souls. And being able to learn each area and master it so well that I can plow through it later is fun to me.

I don't see why having fun and playing to win have to be mutually exclusive. Sure, not every game has to be based around being victorious, but in Dark Souls feeling accomplished is a big part of the experience. Castlevania is a good example for comparison against dark souls to explain why I find DS1 to be a little dysfunctional in design.

In Castlevania, the medusa heads are as engaging in your first playthrough as they are in your most recent one. In dark souls, many sections become less engaging on subsequent playthroughs. Of course Dark Souls has the variety to keep things fresh, but the Medusa heads in Castlevania are unable to be circumvented; they must always be dodged in a way that makes sense in the context of the game (jumping, moving while they are above & below you, or attacking them). The medusa heads always apply some sort of pressure on the player. The same can not be said for many enemies in Dark Souls as they are unable to apply pressure on the player. In Castlevania, to progress quickly and efficiently, one must interact with the medusa heads in an engaging manner. In Dark souls if you attempt to progress quickly and efficiently, you sidestep a good deal of the fun combat because of the lack of pressure which sometimes doesn't make that much sense in the context of the game. I understand why Dark Souls takes the approach it does, and I commend its success on admirably merging arcade(ish) action combat with the variety and progression of a more traditional hack and slash RPG, but I can't help but feel like the game made compromises along the way that are a little disappointing. I don't think swaying too far to one side would fix any problems without immediately bringing up new ones, but I can't see why DS1 wouldn't benefit from enemies being able to apply more pressure (at least in NG+ or something).

[Bananamatic]

It seems like many people here implied I 'played the game wrong' for using a bow at all. I can't agree with this sentiment. I shouldn't have to self impose a ruleset to be able to criticize a game. The fact that I could ignore the bow doesn't change the fact that this is a game with broken ranged combat.

you didn't play it wrong, you just decided to play it in the most tedious, slow and boring way
that's like farming holy waters in devil may cry 3 and then spamming them on everything, then saying the game is too easy and the enemies don't do anything

pretty much every game that isn't pvp has a boring and easy way to beat everything
it's way easier to just use a zweihander anyways, it has insane range, wide sweeps on 2 handed attacks and stuns everything with ease
same result except it doesn't take ages

[Sumez]

In Castlevania, the medusa heads are as engaging in your first playthrough as they are in your most recent one. In dark souls, many sections become less engaging on subsequent playthroughs.

If that were true I would agree with you, but I never had this experience with Dark Souls. Not even remotely.

I do agree with you that having a wide range of approaches in how to play the game, and having some being vastly "worse" than others in terms of fun is a bad design choice. I was never a fan of all those different possible builds in the Souls game, and the weapon selection is way too wide and unclear. This was completely remedied in Bloodborne, and one of that game's improvements.
I don't think it makes it any less of an amazing game though. I would like it to have been different, but I had great fun playing the game the ways I did.

[null1024]

Star Fox 2 [Beta] [SNES].
yeah, in preparation for the big actual release, I decided to fire this game up again
Normal is appallingly easy and probably should have been renamed Easy, Hard isn't too bad [edit: played it again, it's really easy and I only had 3% planet damage when I was done], but Expert...

Damn, it's intense. It's got a few issues in this state [some that probably are going to still be in the final game], but flying everywhere trying to deal with the sheer amount of shit coming at the planet is intense. Chasing missiles can be a bit futile, you really do just need to take planets back and deal with the ships. Some of the ship layouts are a bit weird on expert.
Compared to the other two difficulties, the stage layouts are better, there are more special encounters, the game really takes a shine here. It's some damn good shit.

my run just ended up with Corneria getting blown up, sadly
I think I had one really dumb example of glitchy behavior [a switch you're supposed to knock over didn't want to fall over for anything], but it was early on and probably didn't affect anything.

I really, really hope the balance is better in the final version because Expert is the only remotely challenging bit of the game.

[edit]
also, there's an annoying bug that seems to give the player Slippy's shield strength and charge time out of nowhere [making fights that would be a breeze with Miyu or Fay a pain because of the painfully long charge period] -- but I don't remember that happening ever before [there's a really obvious shift on the shield bar on the map screen that indicates when the bug happens], maybe there's another patch that fixes that and I don't have it?

[Durandal]

Have bought Overload on Early Access after trying out the updated free playable teaser, and my suspicions were confirmed: this might very well be the best first-person shooter released in years, and the first Kickstarter-funded spiritual successor to actually hold up to its source material. I'm counting 6DoF shooters as first-person shooters because 6DoF shooters need more love anyways.
It's made by the same guys who worked on Descent, as opposed to Descent: Underground which is being developed by some randos who got a hold of the IP and are doing whatever to it.
And already it ticks most boxes of what made Descent great, different enemy types with well-defined roles and unique AI, a whole load of weapons and missiles to play around with, intense box-dodging action in tight quarters, vertigo-inducing level design, and a whole lot of dodging/leading your shots in zero-G space.

Though the general structure from what I've seen is identical to Descent (fly into space bases, fight your way through hordes of violent robots, rescue people in cryopods, destroy the reactor, and escape in time), Overload does bring some changes with it. The afterburners and headlights are now default equipment, you no longer receive damage from ramming into walls, robot generators are destructible, and a whole lot of other stuff. One new addition is the ability to perform a Smash Attack by pressing the attack button while boosting, which lets you ram into robots without taking any damage, and deals guaranteed hitstun damage which can be quite useful, on top of serving as a satisfying finisher if you stunned a robot by shooting it with a missile. The missiles have seen a lot of changes too. Your standard go-to missile is a fast one which is more akin to the Mercury Missile but deals the damage of the Concussion Missile, there are missile pods which can fire a constant barrage of smaller missiles at groups of enemies, the Hunters which act like double homing missiles, the Creepers are like mines you shoot in a direction and home in to anything close which are incredibly useful, and the usual Devastator being a missile of mega destruction. New weapons like the Reflex bounce off walls, the flak cannon acts as an actual flak cannon destroying everything close to you with an inaccurate hail of fire, the Crusher being a satisfying to use shotgun, and the Cyclone being a bullet hose useful at clearing rooms.

Aside from a singleplayer campaign, Overload is also delivering on a challenge mode where you're thrown in an arena of endlessly respawning robots where you must survive for as long as you can or kill as many bots as possible within a time limit. And it's serious fun. There are already six challenge levels available with leaderboards, try getting more than 100 bots on Ace+. The singleplayer levels have careful pacing whereas challenge mode is unbridled aggression. After a certain period of time in challenge mode a super robot will spawn which is usually a stronger variant of an existing enemy with different attacks, more health, and more dangerous behavior, which can flip the tables on you if you're caught in a bad spot.

The new enemy roster is great as well. The Gorgon/Goblin function as your usual cannon fodder where the Goblin dies in one missile and can be easily dodged whereas the Gorgon lays down more suppressive fire on you. The Scorpion follows you around and often hides behind obstacles if he's visible in plain sight, but goes nuts on your ass if you turn your back on him. The Shredder is a bot with a big saw who constantly charges you head-on and is a blast to fight. The Titans are bitches who spam missiles way too much. Hitscan enemies are back in the shape of Ogres, but as they only attack with hitscan if they are close and can be outmaneuvered given their limited turning speed and not 100% accurate hitchance, I'd say they are still fair.

Overload will also feature an upgrade tree, where you can spend upgrade points found by exploring the level or rescuing all humans. Though most of the upgrades pertaining your ship are rather bland, the weapons do seem to feature multiple upgrade variants. I've not spent a lot of time with the game, but from what I've read on the Overload forums these variants do change things up a bit in an interesting way, so the upgrade tree might not be completely hackneyed.

One thing of note is that the levels are a bit too dim. Descent was usually well-lit and quite colorful, whereas Overload is largely dark with bright individual lights, and that really strains my eyes despite playing in broad daylight. Even though you always have the headlights and have an upgrade to reduce headlight energy consumption completely, the levels are not that vibrant color-wise. The only other game where I had this problem was Gears of War 2, which largely took place underground with a dark brown-gray color palette.