What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Anything from run & guns to modern RPGs, what else do you play?
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Steamflogger Boss
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Steamflogger Boss »

Been playing Yakuza 5 on PS4. Might as well get something out of buying all three of those games again.
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6t8k
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by 6t8k »

XoPachi: maybe A Hat in Time? I haven't played it, but it makes a good first impression, ticks most (all?) of your requirements and I've heard good things about it from others.

Apart from that, assuming you have a Switch, I could recommend Luigi's Mansion 3. A likable and quite unique experience through and through and frankly, the only game in this vein I've played in a long time.

I've had coarse notes about my LM3 impressions sitting on the hard drive since November, which I had planned to develop into a short review. But since I think this won't be happening anymore, here you go :P Some aspects I specifically compared to LM1, because I expected it'd turn out being more like that than LM2, which in some ways it did and others it didn't (contains no notable content/story spoilers, I think):
Spoiler
General remarks:
• Unlike LM1, very riddle-focused
• The riddles are, apart from a few (and potentially slightly annoying) exceptions, quite easy
• Nevertheless, if you liked LM1, I think there's a good chance you'll like LM3 as well
• Take your time and take in everything you see. Don't rush - the lovable art design is worth it.
• The gems too, but the boos rather not.
• Background music is servicable though not outstanding. Not something I'd want to return to outside of the game.
• While LM1 wasn't really creepy, well maybe for children a little, there are almost no creepy parts in LM3 at all. Compared to LM1, the whole setting isn't really creepy anymore, only certain rare elements, and those are mostly found in the first half of the game.


positive:
• Quite a bit longer than LM1
• Very pretty graphics full of athmosphere, many minute details. Fantastic animation work.
• There's excellent thematic diversification across the 17 hotel floors
• Cool boss battles

negative:
• Too easy, mainly for two reasons: 1) everything is dropping hearts all the time, and most of all 2): the dog bones. I first thought this was a joke :p Furthermore there's just one standard difficulty setting.
• A little repetitive in places (Polterkitty, ...)
• You earn no noteworthy new abilities along the way that would have an effect on core gameplay aspects. While Gooigi is the centerpiece of many puzzles, and mixes things up a bit, he's basically, well, a copy of Luigi. Only the suction cup comes to mind, but just like Gooigi, you already get it almost at the beginning. LM1 for example had the three elements... most normal fights are a little repetitive too as a result.
• My experience was that during some riddles or boss fights, it's not uncommon that you have to stop and ask yourself for a while which stupid special trick you missed, because the opponent just isn't budging. Sometimes, the game breaks with previously established logic or introduces mechanics that seem quite arbitrary, which can be a bit annoying. When you finally find out, these are typical "Ooh... so that was it? -.-" moments.

Bonus: some floor ideas I'd have liked seeing implemented:
• Shopping mall / supermarket. More akin to a "real" one, not like the Shops floor.
• Waterpark with wellness area
• Observatory
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Mischief Maker »

Thea 2: The Shattering.

The Thea games are truly unique. Sort of a civilization-style 4x, sort of a story-generator survival game like Rimworld, sort of a plot-heavy RPG, and sort of a card battle game, all set in a Grimm's Fairy Tales world heavily flavored by Slavic mythology.

It's a love-it-or-hate-it kinda game and I am head-over-heels in the love side of that equation.
Two working class dudes, one black one white, just baked a tray of ten cookies together.

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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by XoPachi »

6t8k wrote:XoPachi: maybe A Hat in Time? I haven't played it, but it makes a good first impression, ticks most (all?) of your requirements and I've heard good things about it from others.

Apart from that, assuming you have a Switch, I could recommend Luigi's Mansion 3. A likable and quite unique experience through and through and frankly, the only game in this vein I've played in a long time.

I've had coarse notes about my LM3 impressions sitting on the hard drive since November, which I had planned to develop into a short review. But since I think this won't be happening anymore, here you go :P Some aspects I specifically compared to LM1, because I expected it'd turn out being more like that than LM2, which in some ways it did and others it didn't (contains no notable content/story spoilers, I think):
Spoiler
General remarks:
• Unlike LM1, very riddle-focused
• The riddles are, apart from a few (and potentially slightly annoying) exceptions, quite easy
• Nevertheless, if you liked LM1, I think there's a good chance you'll like LM3 as well
• Take your time and take in everything you see. Don't rush - the lovable art design is worth it.
• The gems too, but the boos rather not.
• Background music is servicable though not outstanding. Not something I'd want to return to outside of the game.
• While LM1 wasn't really creepy, well maybe for children a little, there are almost no creepy parts in LM3 at all. Compared to LM1, the whole setting isn't really creepy anymore, only certain rare elements, and those are mostly found in the first half of the game.


positive:
• Quite a bit longer than LM1
• Very pretty graphics full of athmosphere, many minute details. Fantastic animation work.
• There's excellent thematic diversification across the 17 hotel floors
• Cool boss battles

negative:
• Too easy, mainly for two reasons: 1) everything is dropping hearts all the time, and most of all 2): the dog bones. I first thought this was a joke :p Furthermore there's just one standard difficulty setting.
• A little repetitive in places (Polterkitty, ...)
• You earn no noteworthy new abilities along the way that would have an effect on core gameplay aspects. While Gooigi is the centerpiece of many puzzles, and mixes things up a bit, he's basically, well, a copy of Luigi. Only the suction cup comes to mind, but just like Gooigi, you already get it almost at the beginning. LM1 for example had the three elements... most normal fights are a little repetitive too as a result.
• My experience was that during some riddles or boss fights, it's not uncommon that you have to stop and ask yourself for a while which stupid special trick you missed, because the opponent just isn't budging. Sometimes, the game breaks with previously established logic or introduces mechanics that seem quite arbitrary, which can be a bit annoying. When you finally find out, these are typical "Ooh... so that was it? -.-" moments.

Bonus: some floor ideas I'd have liked seeing implemented:
• Shopping mall / supermarket. More akin to a "real" one, not like the Shops floor.
• Waterpark with wellness area
• Observatory
I've 100% Hat in Time. It was honestly one of the most authentic classic experiences I've played in ages. Right down the the music. God...that game took me back so far.
Like a genuine nostalgia. Not in the trendy marketable sense anytime *anyone* does something that isn't 3D. It really did have some GameCube magic to me. Just reminds me of my 2nd grade self playing Mario Sunshine on my Sharp CRT in 2002. As far as platformers are concerned, that is exactly the sort of game I point to when I mention this topic.

Something about Luigi's Mansion 3 put me off, but I guess beggars can't be choosers. I'll see about looking into it. I only finished the first one.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Obiwanshinobi »

XoPachi wrote:It really did have some GameCube magic to me. Just reminds me of my 2nd grade self playing Mario Sunshine on my Sharp CRT in 2002. As far as platformers are concerned, that is exactly the sort of game I point to when I mention this topic.
As I enjoyed revisiting I-Ninja (as well as Beyond Good & Evil) in their GameCube versions this time a couple of years ago (as the one and only SD console I've bothered hooking up my CRT since moving remains the Wii), I can recommend I-Ninja* for PC to anyone without problem with StarForce protection, assuming they seek a solid 3D platform game outputting pretty high resolutions. "The best 3D platform game on PC since Rayman 2: The Great Escape" may not seem like much, but these two ARE that good on PC (Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg WOULD be up there, if the port was equally good, which it is NOT).
Most recently, when playing El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron, I had pretty strong reminiscences of Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc as both marry far out aesthetics with pretty "been there, done that" game design. Then again, Rayman 3 is one of the few games I consider worth playing for their aesthetics alone.
(Psychonauts, also on PC, high resolution and all, didn't do it for me. Just the playable character's uninspired animation was an utter eyesore in this genre game. If you get THIS wrong in TPP, you had better have real sweet gameplay to boot, such as S&P2 has.)

*) I used to think that Argonaut, when working on its combat, already knew Ys VI, but considering both came out the same year 2003, Brave Fancer Musashi seems like the most possible inspiration for either.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by BulletMagnet »

Just finished the "remastered" version of Yakuza 3, and have now completed all of the "main" series games in some form or another; while the lack of certain improvements from later entries is sometimes a pain, as one would expect, overall I found that the game holds up pretty well, and has a certain "vibe" that none of the others do, at least I think so. The tourist-y Okinawa location and increased focus on the orphanage - as opposed to the usual big-city face-smashing, though obviously there's still plenty of that too - are my best guesses as to the main culprit to that end, but maybe others would disagree.

One odd thing I noticed as I got farther in is how much I was relying on the Komaki Tiger Drop counter move in particular when it came to bosses and other such enemies; it was pretty much the only thing that consistently worked on a lot of them, so I found myself doing most of my damage by waiting for an opportunity and powering through their attacks (funnily enough, a lot of the hits I took were from "super armored" baddies as well). Again, maybe it's just me.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Steamflogger Boss »

BulletMagnet wrote:Just finished the "remastered" version of Yakuza 3, and have now completed all of the "main" series games in some form or another; while the lack of certain improvements from later entries is sometimes a pain, as one would expect, overall I found that the game holds up pretty well, and has a certain "vibe" that none of the others do, at least I think so. The tourist-y Okinawa location and increased focus on the orphanage - as opposed to the usual big-city face-smashing, though obviously there's still plenty of that too - are my best guesses as to the main culprit to that end, but maybe others would disagree.

One odd thing I noticed as I got farther in is how much I was relying on the Komaki Tiger Drop counter move in particular when it came to bosses and other such enemies; it was pretty much the only thing that consistently worked on a lot of them, so I found myself doing most of my damage by waiting for an opportunity and powering through their attacks (funnily enough, a lot of the hits I took were from "super armored" baddies as well). Again, maybe it's just me.
I feel like 6 kinda had the same vibe as 3.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by BulletMagnet »

Steamflogger Boss wrote:I feel like 6 kinda had the same vibe as 3.
It's definitely the one that comes the closest, with another atypical setting (more "rural" than "touristy", but still, close enough) and the baby driving the plot (and making tough ol' Kiryu play the big ol' softie) in lieu of the orphans.

Another similarity, interestingly enough, is that both those games served as technical transitions for the series; 3 was the first entry with "fully" 3D environments (a recently released interview video with the directors of 3/4/5 has them mentioning that they had to rebuild Kamurocho from scratch for that one, and that doing so pushed the team to its limit), while 6 was the debut of the Dragon Engine (and perhaps the roughest around the edges, at least in my opinion).
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Marc »

I played 0-> Kiwami -> 6 (then abandoned Kiwami 2 and Judgement), and it was strange adjusting to the new engine.
I was delighted when I realised you could drag fights into the shops, but the engine itself felt quite heavy and a bit laggier than 0.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by BulletMagnet »

Marc wrote:I was delighted when I realised you could drag fights into the shops, but the engine itself felt quite heavy and a bit laggier than 0.
The main thing that bugged me was the drop from 60 FPS to 30 (or less), which not only made the game look worse in motion but feel less precise; I can't help but wonder if this was part of what led them to make Yakuza 7 a turn-based game. To be fair, I'm the sort who will not hesitate for a moment to turn down every graphical setting I need to on a PC game to make it run at 60, and not everyone has the same preferences I do.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Vanguard »

Touhou A Live

Touhou A Live is a fan game that combines characters from Touhou with gameplay from Live A Live, a Super Famicom RPG that was never released in the west. The premise is the same as in Live A Live - you play through the personal stories of seven different heroes from different times and places. After beating all seven, you unlock an eighth story that reveals a connection between the seven stories, and in the end all of the heroes band together against the true enemy.
Spoiler
Image
The battle system is a bit different from the JRPG norm. Fights take place on a 7x7 grid. Items and abilities have different effective ranges and angles. Many of the most powerful attacks in the game can only hit diagonally. Since most enemies have bigger sprites than you, if you stand a knight's move away from them, their diagonal attacks won't be able to hit you but yours will still reach them. Different actions take different amounts of time. Moving and skipping a turn seem to be fairly quick. Some abilities need to be charged up before they can be fired off. Those are risky when you've got one character, they're a lot more useful when you've got others who can act while one is charging. Buffs and debuffs tend to be pretty strong and you can stack them so try exploiting that if you get stuck. As far as flaws go, luck is too big of a factor, especially when status ailments are involved, and there's no way to skip animations. It isn't a terribly deep battle system, but there's more to it than the standard JRPG combat of alternating between your biggest attack and healing.
Spoiler
Image
Each character's scenario comes with gameplay differences. Mokou's scenario plays like a standard JRPG with an overworld, a dungeon, and optional side quests. Cirno's is a boss rush where she steals enemy techniques, blue mage style. Youmu's is an assassination mission where she can fight her way through or use stealth to avoid combat (I recommend not going for either 0% kills or 100% kills in Youmu's chapter unless you want to follow a guide the whole time). In most of the first seven scenarios enemies are visible in dungeons like in Chrono Trigger and Earthbound. The eight and ninth chapters switch over to random encounters, a bad move. The first seven chapters are fairly short, you can finish them in an hour or two each. The final two chapters are a lot longer.
Spoiler
Image
The soundtrack does a great job of combining Touhou and Live a Live music. Every once in a while they'll mix something else in there as well. For example, they use parts of Final Fantasy Tactics's soundtrack for the eighth chapter's brutal war against Makai. It all works really well.
Spoiler
Image
Overall Touhou A Live is pretty cool. It's very memorable and has tons of variety. Switching up both the gameplay's rules and the story's genre between chapters keeps things fresh. The combat, while good by JRPG standards, is still far beneath the likes of Etrian Odyssey and Helen's Mysterious Castle.

B+

The english version is available as a free download here.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Mero »

Labyrinth of Refrain, clearly I'm doing something wrong because I'm nowhere close to beating the third dungeon boss atm. I wonder if there's some trick to that fight, he hits so hard.

Edit: Got it at about the 10th attempt, the RNG gods smiled on me enough to block/evade enough of his attacks, if you don't kill him quickly enough when he's close to death (flashing red) he kills everyone with a death attack, this time I had enough people alive to inflict enough damage (though just in the nick of time).
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Sumez »

I saw an ad from Square Enix that the "Trials of Mana" remake demo was available on PS4 and Switch. That is, the Seiken Densetsu 3 remake which was made obsolete the second it was announced, due to the simultaneous release of a long awaited official translation of the original.

My curiosity got the best of me though, and I really felt like trying it out to see what was really up with this thing (psa, the demo is actually not on PSN, or wasn't yesterday, but it is on the Switch eShop).

And surprise, surprise, I actually really liked this. Though it does suffer from an obviously low budget, I don't think it looks as cheap as it could, especially considering the weak-ass recent Secret of Mana remake. In fact, it looks really nice at times, and you can tell this game was made with love and intent, moreso than the soulless cash-grab you might expect.
The worst issue with the presentation is some of the character animations paired against the extremely bad English voice acting, and that's fixed by changing the voices to Japanese. Even if you're the kind of person that always prefers the option of English voices when it's available, do yourself the service of switching to Japanese - it made a world of a difference to me.

The combat system felt really, really nice. Very simple hack and slash, but responsive and intuitive. It does away with the waiting for your power bar of the original, and I'd say it's possibly an improvement, but it comes with the caveat of feeling extremely inconsequential. Over the entirety of the demo, which is surprisingly long, my life bar never dropped below a couple of HPs below max, in spite of pretty sloppy play. The one boss fight you do get to fight went down in like a minute with little consideration of how to approach it. And there was like three difficulty levels below the one I played on, and only one above it. One can hope it changes the stakes a lot.

Aside from that potentially irrelevant issue, the only other thing that stroked me the wrong way was the constant quest marker telling you exactly what to go and do, even in situations where the main character has no good reason to know exactly where to go and is expected to go explore and look for a way forward, the game will tell you where to mindlessly move to, as if actively trying to avoid the player ever immersing themselves in the story and game world at all.

At the end of the day though, I really feel like playing this game again, and I'm very tempted to get this version and play through it. But the fact that this still is obvious discount 3D, paired with the original's beautiful pixel art which remains some of the best 2D artwork I've ever seen in a video game, gives the edge to replaying the original. Especially now that an official translation is available.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by kitten »

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can't stop playing it. man, doing that little contra caricature pattern was way more difficult than it looks, you're given a super low resolution and detail other than simple patterns comes out awfully (it does a weird thing where it merges pixels of similar colors at certain angles but only sometimes - it's really weird!!!). i think i did a pretty good job.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by BulletMagnet »

Sumez wrote:(psa, the demo is actually not on PSN, or wasn't yesterday, but it is on the Switch eShop).
I DLed it last week on the PS4, so if it isn't there now it definitely was previously. I never played the original to any notable extent so I can't really comment "in depth" on the remake, but I actually liked the SoM revamp so everybody stopped listening to me awhile ago on this front anyway. :P

In other news, felt like a "palette cleanser", so out comes the Wii U and Cap'n Toad (any and all attempts to persuade me that "Captain" is the correct term will be ignored :P).

The game's main claim to fame is also its main drawback - since the whole idea is that you have to constantly mess with the camera to see what you need to see, when things are going well it's "gee, that's some neat level design", but when they aren't it's "surprise, death from nowhere!" On the bright side the game never gets too challenging, at least if you just want to get to the end (which is where I decided to leave it), level themes are shuffled around enough that they don't get repetitive, and while I wish I could turn off the motion sensor altogether I am still VERY grateful that the right stick is always an option, thank heavens Nintendo wasn't in a "force the gimmick" mood with this one.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by BrianC »

Been playing Outrun. Finally unlocked arcade mode on both 3DS and Switch.I plan to go back to the Saturn version and play with the wheel.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by BIL »

kitten wrote:i think i did a pretty good job.
Being not very conversant with Animal Crossing, I assumed it was an official decal at first. :smile:
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by kitten »

BIL wrote:Being not very conversant with Animal Crossing, I assumed it was an official decal at first. :smile:
ty!! Image

Image

here's what i had to work with. you're having to constantly compare to the little bottom-left thing how it will turn out in-game, and sometimes it does some really goofy stuff with whether it chooses to 'connect' a pixel or leave it floating, especially with diagonals (making the konami logo look like the konami logo in another decal was a huge pain). mildly alter the palette on a pixel and it will sometimes erase or make it significantly more prominent on the decal - really finicky, and getting bill's cigar to kind of show was much more frustrating than you'd imagine. lots of people have been using an app that converts photos, but it works best with close-ups or defined logos and doing something like this purely manually is weirdly tough.

been wanting to do some work on clothing for the game (i'm happy with a hat i made), but i keep getting distracted by fishing and whatnot. simple patterns with an eye for symmetry/wrapping and keen palette selection seem to work best for those.

(edit: some information just brought to my attention)
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Stevens »

My wife is hoarding fish in Animal Crossing. Her house looks like a fish store.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Immryr »

i really don't get animal crossing. seems a bit like a capitalist skinnerbox nightmare version of boku no natsuyasumi.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by kitten »

i don't know if i'd necessarily say animal crossing's politics are inherently capitalist or not. there's a lot of ways in which they obviously are, especially from a superficial perspective, but the game seems to also believe in things like never being pressured to actually pay off loans, land and space for everyone, communal respect & ethics, etc. you also like, sell bugs and fish or make little things as your source of income - industry is hardly ever championed and sometimes seems actively suggested to be bad.

something interesting is that the series director considers tom nook quite the nice person, and i'm very curious if his original north american localization as a bit of an asshole lording his loan over your head was actually in the original text. either way, nook's no longer characterized like he used to be, and the game has the friendliest tone it has ever had, in general, in this installment. he's supposed to act as a motivator, not a landlord or loan shark (you never pay rent, you're never charged interest, etc.). he also lets you pay your initial home off in this game with a virtual points system you get just for doing things around the island and then asks for permission for every loan to increase the size of your home in this one. it kind of begs the question - what the hell is the psychology around him?

as for it being a skinnerbox... i mean, i suppose it depends on how you play it and how much you actively despise activity loops and their intricately intersecting and softly lubricated gears constantly turning around you. you can find yourself trapped like an insect and moving from one to another with an endless amount of things to do, but i think the real charm in this game is in the non-standard goals. furniture arranging, design creation, dress-up, niceties like sending friends & fellow villagers happy little letters about how you appreciate them. i tolerate - i mean, maybe it's better to say actively enjoy - the skinnerbox bullshit because it's all stuff that adds onto those things that matter more to me. if you talk to almost anyone who sticks with these games, it's the little things they always talk about loving the most, and the game is bulging a the seams with capacity to facilitate "the little things."
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by mycophobia »

i liek to buy Clothes
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Sumez »

I thought Nook's asshole loan shark/landlord persona was mostly a meme thing due to that being has obvious role in the Animal Crossing environment. I've never gotten that approach from his actual personality in either of the games I've played (GC and DS ones)
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by it290 »

Playing Langrisser I & II on the Switch. I've played through these games on the Genesis before, but the new release has some great quality of life improvements and being able to use the original Satoshi Urushihara character designs is freaking awesome. Really the perfect style of game to get sucked into and lose yourself for a few hours at a time when that's pretty hard to do.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by TransatlanticFoe »

Never played the originals but read in a couple of reviews that it uses enemy reinforcements in its stage design.

This wound me up a lot in Fire Emblem (again, modern n00b here) because it was so easy to just get wrecked by simply not knowing some shit was about to spawn, so you either memorise and restart or you plain lose units through no fault of your own. How does Langrisser I/II handle this sort of thing?
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Blinge »

^^ Ah yes, the ol' " fuck you, save states it is. "
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by it290 »

TransatlanticFoe wrote:Never played the originals but read in a couple of reviews that it uses enemy reinforcements in its stage design.

This wound me up a lot in Fire Emblem (again, modern n00b here) because it was so easy to just get wrecked by simply not knowing some shit was about to spawn, so you either memorise and restart or you plain lose units through no fault of your own. How does Langrisser I/II handle this sort of thing?
Theres definitely some of that but these remakes have some features that make this way less of an issue than in the originals. First of all, there are more difficulty settings and an 'easy start' feature that makes the early game significantly less taxing if that's your bag. Secondly, before each battle you have the option of looking at a hint that will give you a vague but still meaningful clue as to the optimum strategy for the battle, and if you more or less stick to that advice you'll likely be well prepared for whatever the game throws at you. There will often be dialogue at the beginning of the battle indicating that reinforcements are expected as well, so you're rarely if ever flying totally blind.


I've played about 20 odd battles using normal difficulty and the 'easy start,' and I've only had to redo one battle so far because I failed to protect some villagers. The original games definitely murdered me way more frequently.
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TransatlanticFoe
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by TransatlanticFoe »

Cheers! Restarting escort/guard missions seems par for the course on those type of objectives, so that sounds pretty promising. If dialogue gives a good hint, that works for me - you can plan your strategy to be a bit more cautious.

I don't like dialing down the difficulty just to guard against the occasional fuck you moment - after getting up to speed on Fire Emblem with Awakening, I start on hard/classic because normal is too easy. I just hate being put in a scenario where enemies spawn and trap you without warning. Sounds like normal is a decent balance so I'll probably pick this one up soonish.
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third_strike
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by third_strike »

An all clear in Garou Arcade Mode in level 8.
My fighting stick is with a problem. It put coins and do inputs alone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=piCtK0pB3Zc


Cleared Street fighter III New Generation and now I will play Street Fighter III 2nd Impact.
Playing Sunset Riders too, just got my first 1loop clear today!

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Mischief Maker
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Mischief Maker »

Age of Wonders: Planetfall. A sci-fi entry in the spiritual successor to Master of Magic series .

On one hand, the game's setting is weird. It kinda feels like it's based on those 80s saturday morning cartoons that were purely a vehicle to push toy sales. One of the units is literally the T-Rex with lasers attached to its head from the Dino-Riders cartoon.

On the other hand, gameplay-wise this is far and away the most fun I've had in an Age of Wonders game, and part of that is the sci fi setting gave the designers much broader lattitude in unit design and abilities than they did in Tolkienworld. The biggest selling point of the game for me is how every single unit in the game has so many different types of attack and support abilities to choose from, the tactical battles are so much more interesting than any previous versions of the series. But there are so many other little improvements to the formula all over the place that I can never go back to AoW3.

The main misstep I think the game made was dividing the world up into province sectors that are gobbled up all at once with this difficult-to-explain but not that complicated exploitation system. I don't know that it necessarily adds anything to the game and the maps certainly look less alive and more "gamey" than the more granular maps of AoW3.

If you're looking for a good 4X with really great tactical combat to burn away the quarantine hours, this one's on sale at GOG right now.
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An oligarch walks in and grabs nine cookies for himself.

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