What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

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

Post by XoPachi »

I've been playing Iconoclasts after a few years.

I put it down a long time ago but, I thought I'd give it a second attempt. Maybe playing Metroid 1 a shit ton last year has seriously spoiled me and ruined my idea of my ideal search action. Because what is this game right now?

Iconoclasts is constantly throwing you into big story set pieces that you're trapped in for like an hour before you can just move on. You're not really exploring anything as much as you're just solving linear puzzles on your way to the next RPG style objective. And you're rarely gaining any kind of progression during this. It's been about 2 hours since I got my last major upgrade inbetween unlocking duplicate moveset tweaks that aren't necessary or all that useful. They just patch existing stock abilities or make your actual upgrades function properly. And those tweaks you have to craft because crafting mechanics good or something. So each chest is a disappointment as it's guaranteed to be only one of three things you can't immediately use.

This game has the absolute balls to make me climb a mountain accompanied by someone, have me back track all the way to the starting area of the game where I have to guess which NPC to talk to next. Then that NPC sends me to another previous area to talk to some guy who tells me to talk to some OTHER guy somewhere else. Then that new guy does the generic "SHOW ME YOUR POWER!!" boss fight (because I didnt just eradicate a gigantic, mountain chewing construct) except its some dumb ass stealth minigame. All so that I can get past a door the guy I was with on the mountain was supposed to let me through but never did.

Between not one of these events did I find an upgrade along the way mind you.

I had just finished some tedium because before the mountain, there was some dumb jail sequence where they take all your stuff. My fucking favorite.
So you have to explore some complex naked, reclaim the only few things you got up to that point and then fight some horrible boss that you can only parry to open up for one hit of damage. Twice. Because....??? He drowns unceremoniously anyway not giving you so much as a name so he wasnt important enough to have 2 awful fights.
It all takes like an hour and a half before you can continue the game.

You are constantly being trapped or captured or ambushed or locked out or in some way barricaded until the story graciously allows you to just progress. The few times you finally can do the search part of the search action, you actually cant because in that hour long jerking around, YOU weren't given any upgrades to tackle more of this stunted map.
The starting gun is completely useless. Half the enemies are immune to it. I have a bomb I hate using that basically became the main weapon and my wrench is now electrified which now also electrifies my bombs when charged. It offers no practical use aside from being a "key" sometimes.
After 6 hours. That's IT.

Everything you do is dictated by a story I've been mostly skipping anyway because I dont care for indie RPG-esque melodrama and quirky, faux Paper Mario humor. It's like nothing in this game is here for the player. It just wants to talk and have it's flashy, drawn out, back to back set pieces. The connective tissue between all this is weak and the pacing is atrocious.

Combat is only half decent during certain boss fights as enemies are generally insta killed for free. Much of the music is grating or boring. Warping in this game is blatantly a patch for the complete lack of world interconnectivity. You can't check the maps of other regions so that means you have to go back to other areas to check their respective maps for items you missed. Robin's hair is stupid as fuck. The game would rather display who's in your party (which doesnt matter beyond STORY because they offer no benefit and aren't playable), instead of a much more useful minimap. You have huge cool downs on all of your heavier attacks but nothing presses you during those so it just makes fighting slower and less interesting. So much is just aggravating and not fun.

I hate this game.
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To Far Away Times
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by To Far Away Times »

vol.2 wrote: Sat Jan 04, 2025 6:00 pm Recently I started going back to older games and realized I never gave Doom a fair shake and decided to run through them.

Impressions of Doom II are fairly obvious in that it doesn't really introduce any new engine mechanics over Doom 1, but the maps are a world apart. The level design, the new enemies, the new featured textures and the length of the game, and the difficultly are all so much better in Doom II that it's not difficult to understand why it's so loved.
And here I liked Doom 1 for it's more simplistic level design over Doom II. I get lost a lot in Doom II. Doom II is definitely a more accomplished game though, and I think both are worth a play through. It's just that I've really had no desire to revisit Doom II, whereas I used to go back and replay Doom 1 over and over again before Doom 2016/Eternal came out and took that spot. Doom 1 occupies this comfy space where (if you've practiced the game a bit) you can beat it in one sitting, making it highly replayable. I don't think I could do that with Doom II.
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vol.2
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by vol.2 »

Lander wrote: Sun Jan 05, 2025 10:02 am BG1's plot isn't all that important, really. The underlying lore implications and future groundwork are of note, but dealing with the big bad was less memorable than off-the-beaten-path encounters like the talking chicken or friendly ghoul.
True. I remember bits and pieces of the first half of the game, and it wasn't exactly the worlds most engaging plot, but certainly enough to get lost in the world and at least care about progressing. Finding little hacks and stuff was my favorite part of it.
And well, PT is an enviable rainy-day game to have :mrgreen: perhaps even worth getting amnesia to reexperience!
I'm keeping that one in my back pocket. No telling when I'm laid up and need something to keep me sane. lol

I also remembered that I only got about halfway through the original System Shock, so I think next I'm going to go stick it Shodan.
To Far Away Times wrote: Sun Jan 05, 2025 7:10 pm And here I liked Doom 1 for it's more simplistic level design over Doom II. I get lost a lot in Doom II. Doom II is definitely a more accomplished game though, and I think both are worth a play through.
Doom 1 definitely wins the "cozy" award; I'll give it that. I started playing Doom 1 in earnest about 4-5 years ago now, and since then I've played it through many times and got a lot better. I know where every enemy is going to be and every item. Doom 2 I literally just picked up a couple weeks ago, and I'm frankly in love with the level design and overall vibe. It's got this kind of living quality to it that I don't really get from Doom 1, where I feel like there is some kind of liminality that threatens to overwhelm me and suck me under.
It's just that I've really had no desire to revisit Doom II, whereas I used to go back and replay Doom 1 over and over again before Doom 2016/Eternal came out and took that spot. Doom 1 occupies this comfy space where (if you've practiced the game a bit) you can beat it in one sitting, making it highly replayable. I don't think I could do that with Doom II.
I think there's probably a lot of people who could do it, but that's definitely not me. I can't tell you exactly why I like Doom II so much, but I do. It inspired me to get a map editor and start learning how to make my own maps, so we'll see what comes of that. I'm currently trying to find a better DOS-based frontend to launch mods. It's all a bit arcane.
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Lander
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Lander »

XoPachi wrote: Sun Jan 05, 2025 3:53 pmIconoclasts
[...]
I hate this game
Oh buddy, I feel that. Iconoclasts is a wholly self-absorbed work; it presents like a high-polish search action, but in reality cares little for anything beyond its story.

And that story is nowhere near as deep or impactful as it seems to think it is. A few plot threads hint at going interesting places, but uniformly fail to follow through. And the conclusion is a legitimate controller-throwing oh FUCK this moment that rug-pulls the entire conceit instead of redeeming it in any way.

If you're close to the end then maybe it's worth soldiering through for the masochistic Image closure factor...
But if you're spent, and just want to satisfy the morbid curiosity:
That elder god serpent thing? It's an alien spaceship piloted by some militant asshole bird-man who ran low on mutagenic power-goo fuel and decided to exploit the planet as raw material for a top-up.

That's it.

The reason behind the entire asinine fite the power plotline - inc. that unlikeable white-haired guy who pointlessly sacrifices himself at the space station - is some moron who never learned the Prime Directive, and fucked up his MapQuest route.

Incredible.
Better to go back to Noitu Love 1 and 2, tbh. Konjak's well capable of making a good game, but that just didn't happen with Iconoclasts for some reason.
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Sumez
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Sumez »

Lander wrote: Mon Jan 06, 2025 10:14 am Oh buddy, I feel that. Iconoclasts is a wholly self-absorbed work; it presents like a high-polish search action, but in reality cares little for anything beyond its story.

And that story is nowhere near as deep or impactful as it seems to think it is. A few plot threads hint at going interesting places, but uniformly fail to follow through. And the conclusion is a legitimate controller-throwing oh FUCK this moment that rug-pulls the entire conceit instead of redeeming it in any way.
Sums up Iconoclasts pretty well. It's really well made, but it's such a complete waste of effort.
Snippet from my own thoughts on the game from a few years back - click the blue arrow for the full deal:
Sumez wrote: Mon Nov 04, 2019 1:32 pm Following the introduction part through the first boss I was immediately celebrating how great the game felt at setting up a world and telling a story without any single line of dialogue - a video game trope that I'm particularly fond of. I saw the tutorial signs which stuck to explaining mechanics entirely through images, and appreciated that Konjak seemed like he was trying to go the extra mile to avoid written words entirely.
But then you get back to the main character's house, and suddenly people start talking.

And then they don't stop talking and talking and talking for the next few hours until you are done with the game.
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XoPachi
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by XoPachi »

Yeah I don't know how long this game is or how close I am to the end. I was seven hours in and quit at the old guy that makes you track or evade him with both Robin and the island chick. Probably one of the worst boss gimmicks I've ever seen in a game like this.
This is definitely the most lopsided and inconsistent game in this genre I've played recently. I'm kind of sick of search actions chiefly because of saturation but, there's not many I think are just bad (that I've played). Axiom Verge 2, Hollow Knight, and TimeSpinner I thought were kinda boring and Iconoclasts isn't outright bad, but it's just straight up infuriating. Far more than those other 3. It borders on an identity crisis and the player pays for it.

Absolutely not finishing this.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by BareKnuckleRoo »

Dipping my toes into the Wild Arms series for the first time with Wild Arms (PS1). Music's great, I'm not fond of the art style though. Turning 3D models into prerendered sprites for the overworld where the eyes and other features sometimes get oddly blurred just isn't as nice as hand-drawn or at least hand retouched pixel work... enemy models in battle are quite decent for the time it's made though, and the combat system seems fun enough. Cecilia's "Mystic" ability reminds me a bit of the IC system in Lufia 2, and the dashing is a bit like a less agile Mother 3.

Also working through SMT If, recruited Charlie for my first playthrough. I'm aware Akira is NG+ material only, but is it recommended to do Akira 2nd, or to try all 3 initial partner options then do Akira? Searching for the game is quite hard online due to the game name (do I search SMTIF or "SMT IF", haha).
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Squire Grooktook »

I personally prefer Doom 1 over Doom 2 because the former is more enjoyable to do a single sitting iron man run of each Episode. Blazing through an entire episode in Doom 1 without dying feels just right, whereas Doom 2's maps are insanely long and complex so each "episode" becomes a real marathon.

If you're doing one stage in one sitting though Doom 2 is definitely the meatier game.
Lander wrote: Mon Jan 06, 2025 10:14 am
XoPachi wrote: Sun Jan 05, 2025 3:53 pmIconoclasts
[...]
I hate this game
Oh buddy, I feel that. Iconoclasts is a wholly self-absorbed work; it presents like a high-polish search action, but in reality cares little for anything beyond its story.

And that story is nowhere near as deep or impactful as it seems to think it is. A few plot threads hint at going interesting places, but uniformly fail to follow through. And the conclusion is a legitimate controller-throwing oh FUCK this moment that rug-pulls the entire conceit instead of redeeming it in any way.

If you're close to the end then maybe it's worth soldiering through for the masochistic Image closure factor...
But if you're spent, and just want to satisfy the morbid curiosity:
That elder god serpent thing? It's an alien spaceship piloted by some militant asshole bird-man who ran low on mutagenic power-goo fuel and decided to exploit the planet as raw material for a top-up.

That's it.

The reason behind the entire asinine fite the power plotline - inc. that unlikeable white-haired guy who pointlessly sacrifices himself at the space station - is some moron who never learned the Prime Directive, and fucked up his MapQuest route.

Incredible.
Better to go back to Noitu Love 1 and 2, tbh. Konjak's well capable of making a good game, but that just didn't happen with Iconoclasts for some reason.
Konjak was a huge douchebag to a friend of mine (literally publicly shit all over him on twitter for an innocent comment about fanservice being okay or some shit, and this is someone who up to that point I imagine probably looked up to him in some fashion or another...so it was probably pretty wounding) and he posts like a reddit fedora tipper sometimes. "Self absorbed" spiritually sounds like the right word for anything he'd write.
Last edited by Squire Grooktook on Mon Jan 06, 2025 4:50 pm, edited 2 times in total.
RegalSin wrote:Japan an almost perfect society always threatened by outsiders....................

Instead I am stuck in the America's where women rule with an iron crotch, and a man could get arrested for sitting behind a computer too long.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by it290 »

I am also a DOOM 1 over DOOM 2 enjoyer (Super Shotgun notwithstanding), although if we're being real, the game's quality is heavily frontloaded in the first episode, although it for the most part avoids some of II's gimmick levels. Better music overall, too.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

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it290 wrote: Mon Jan 06, 2025 4:36 pm I am also a DOOM 1 over DOOM 2 enjoyer (Super Shotgun notwithstanding), although if we're being real, the game's quality is heavily frontloaded in the first episode, although it for the most part avoids some of II's gimmick levels. Better music overall, too.
I personally like the Roland SC music from the second game better than the first. More than anything, I enjoy the greater difficultly of Doom 2, even on lower difficulty settings. If you want to make Doom 1 feel hard, you have to crank it up to 11, but Doom 2 just has more challenging level design and a wider range of difficult monsters. I will admit to kind of hating them for the forced damage areas, but it's manageable after a couple playthroughs if you are quick. The only real disappointment for me with Doom II was the final boss being too easy. All you have to do is hideout down by the rising platform and wait for it to come down. Once you're on the platform, nothing can get you until it reaches the top, and you have to fire before you reach the top anyways so you can just jump right off

I started playing Master Levels and Legacy of Rust. LOR is HARD! The first level has a secret with a time limit, and the second level has a difficulty spike of a billion. I think they were clearly made for people who have been playing for 30 years.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Sima Tuna »

I prefer DOOM 1 for the superior level design, although DOOM 2 has the better selection of enemies and weapons. The super shotgun occupying that mid-range "just good enough" tier for every challenge while also being relatively ammo-efficient feels so nice. DOOM doesn't really have that. The standard shotgun is a bit wimpy for heavier enemies. The chaingun runs out of ammo quickly. The rockets have splash damage that can kill you if enemies get too close. The chainsaw is purely for melee. Every weapon in original DOOM has a purpose but they're all kinda specialized... Except the pistol, which is just shit. Yes, I know you can snipe with it but it's still garbage.

DOOM 2's super shotgun inspired so many other sweet-spot video game shotguns, from the FEAR shotgun to BLOOD shotgun to Halo: CE shotgun. Most of the best video game shotguns are more like a DOOM 2 super shotgun than different.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by XoPachi »

Squire Grooktook wrote: Mon Jan 06, 2025 4:31 pm Konjak was a huge douchebag to a friend of mine (literally publicly shit all over him on twitter for an innocent comment about fanservice being okay or some shit, and this is someone who up to that point I imagine probably looked up to him in some fashion or another...so it was probably pretty wounding) and he posts like a reddit fedora tipper sometimes. "Self absorbed" spiritually sounds like the right word for anything he'd write.
Jesus Christ...

I know nothing about Konjak tbh.
I only know this game. I think I saw Noitu Love on Steam but it looked unappealing to me so I just skipped over it. For some reason, it doesn't surprise me to hear he might be a prick.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

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BareKnuckleRoo wrote: Mon Jan 06, 2025 3:15 pm Dipping my toes into the Wild Arms series for the first time with Wild Arms (PS1).
I liked the game more than Final Fantasy VII as a kid and had a blast with the remake.Never played any of its sequels though.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

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Squire Grooktook wrote: Mon Jan 06, 2025 4:31 pm I personally prefer Doom 1 over Doom 2 because the former is more enjoyable to do a single sitting iron man run of each Episode. Blazing through an entire episode in Doom 1 without dying feels just right, whereas Doom 2's maps are insanely long and complex so each "episode" becomes a real marathon.
I just prefer Doom 1 because the level design is so much better. It's like Doom 2 focused more on the atmosphere and identity of each stage, which *IS* cool, and worked for something like Duke Nukem 3D. But the Doom 1 stages are just way, way more fun. Especially the Romero designed ones.
Squire Grooktook wrote: Mon Jan 06, 2025 4:31 pm Konjak was a huge douchebag to a friend of mine (literally publicly shit all over him on twitter for an innocent comment about fanservice being okay or some shit, and this is someone who up to that point I imagine probably looked up to him in some fashion or another...so it was probably pretty wounding) and he posts like a reddit fedora tipper sometimes. "Self absorbed" spiritually sounds like the right word for anything he'd write.
No idea how that exchange played out, and I'm honestly not really interested in digging further into such a stupid toxic subject - but to be honest, fanservice in video games is annoying as fuck :P
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by XoPachi »

Fanservice tends to only bug me when it becomes a major focal point in a long established series that had no hint of it for multiple games. But I find that's not terribly common.
Series that offer it from the onset, I'll try to accept that's it's own identity and just ignore it if it's a nature I don't care for.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

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Sumez wrote: Wed Jan 08, 2025 8:04 am I just prefer Doom 1 because the level design is so much better. It's like Doom 2 focused more on the atmosphere and identity of each stage, which *IS* cool, and worked for something like Duke Nukem 3D. But the Doom 1 stages are just way, way more fun. Especially the Romero designed ones.
It's interesting that you mention Duke here because I've often heard the comparison before. I think it's because Doom II is on the cusp of vertical mouselook and jumping, and Duke is on the other side of the divide. Doom II is approaching Duke levels of difficulties at times, but without giving the player those advantages.

I think there are several amazingly designed maps in Doom II, and there are some crappy maps in Doom I. Overall, Doom I has a more consistent flow to it and is less random in the first half of the game (but becomes pretty scattered by the end of Episode II). For my money, the best levels of Doom II were better than the best levels of Doom I; they were bigger, had more interesting textures, made much better use of vertical space, and were more challenging.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by it290 »

Agreed that Doom 1 falls apart in the latter half, but Doom 2 has stuff like Tricks and Traps, The Pit, and Refueling Base all in succession. I think Romero is just a better designer than Petersen on balance anyway, which I think makes D1E1 the best block of maps overall (even if they're on the easy side).
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Squire Grooktook »

I have no problem with level design in episode 2 and 3 in doom 1 myself (I guess that one lava island map in ep 3 can be frustrating if you don't know where to go, and the final maze), and I like that the game keeps a consistent aesthetic theme and sense of escalation (EP 1 = sci-fi military base, EP 2 = mashup of the human world and gothic horror, EP 3 = full on Hell, worlds of bloody viscera and fire/brimstone). Doom 1 progression feels like an adventure with a logical endpoint.

This is one seldom mentioned flaw (IMO) in Doom 2 and Quake: there's much less a sense of escalation and theme to their worlds. Outside of the urban areas in Doom 2 its tilesets are all over the place and you never really know what these locations are supposed to be. Meanwhile Quake has strong atmosphere and visual design, but once you've seen one episodes progression of sci-fi -> castle -> eldritch tomb...you've nearly seen them all, and there's not much of a climax or any kind of curveball for the finale (Azure Agony is as close as you get to something "different" and climactic).
XoPachi wrote: Mon Jan 06, 2025 11:53 pm I only know this game. I think I saw Noitu Love on Steam but it looked unappealing to me so I just skipped over it. For some reason, it doesn't surprise me to hear he might be a prick.
Noitu Love 2 is a nice little game, I'd still recommend it. Partially mouse based treasure esque boss rush brawler, clever control scheme and movement that's genuinely fun. Short and not too hard 1cc but a fun ride.

Though while the game has basically 0 story, it's intentionally (???) stupid final boss dialogue perhaps hints at the self aware hipsterism that would come later.
Sumez wrote: Wed Jan 08, 2025 8:04 am No idea how that exchange played out, and I'm honestly not really interested in digging further into such a stupid toxic subject
All I remember was that it was the most innocent and friendly reply in the world- something to the effect of "I mean, I don't think sexuality in art is inherently wrong" offered with no ill will and in perfectly good natured innocence and context - and the guy just exploded at him and called him all sorts of names, personally insulted him, etc. It was such an insane over-reaction, especially since pretty sure I've seen Konjak as no stranger to racey/lewd art in the past (hypocrite?).

Maybe the guy was just having a bad day but it was just so cruel to brutally lash out at a fellow artist (especially a much smaller one, and one who very probably looked up to him) like that for basically no reason. After that I pretty much lost all respect for the guy.
Sumez wrote: Wed Jan 08, 2025 8:04 am but to be honest, fanservice in video games is annoying as fuck :P
I like cute heroines in bikini armor and leotards : )

I'm going to will more into existence

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RegalSin wrote:Japan an almost perfect society always threatened by outsiders....................

Instead I am stuck in the America's where women rule with an iron crotch, and a man could get arrested for sitting behind a computer too long.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

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Squire Grooktook wrote: Wed Jan 08, 2025 7:36 pm This is one seldom mentioned flaw (IMO) in Doom 2 and Quake: there's much less a sense of escalation and theme to their worlds.
That has to be the single most common criticism I've been running across for Doom II, especially over on the Doom World forums. Doom 1's maps were more tailored to be part of an overall "Episode" that "tell a story" and that Doom II's maps often feel more shoehorned into the plot of the Episodes.

The 3rd and 4th Doom 1 Episodes are in keeping with the theme of the story in that you are vaguely "in hell," but they don't really feel like (to me) that they do anything to advance the storytelling of the first game; they are just lava levels and frankly all pretty similar and kind of bland. There are also a few maps here and there that stick out as less fun and more mazy than anything else. Doom II definitely is guilty of that on the worst of the maps, but there's just so much more to play in Doom II that is great that it doesn't feel like a huge issue to me. Doom 1 on the other hand very much feels like it "runs out of steam," and I generally lose patience for the later maps on replays as they don't all interest me that much.

Quake on the other hand that's a whole different enchilada. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love Quake, but it doesn't feel like you're progressing through any kind of a story to me and it never did; it's more like you're just drifting around from place to place, setting to setting, being your best Quake Guy self and taking out the trash. The levels have more of a location to them than they do a story. You do, however, progress through levels that are of increasing difficulties. So there is that.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Sumez »

Squire Grooktook wrote: Wed Jan 08, 2025 7:36 pm Maybe the guy was just having a bad day but it was just so cruel to brutally lash out at a fellow artist (especially a much smaller one, and one who very probably looked up to him) like that for basically no reason. After that I pretty much lost all respect for the guy.
I used to hang out with Konjak among others on an IRC channel ~25 years ago, long before he made anything famous. And I remember him as a really nice guy, so that's sad to hear. I hope it was as you say, "just a bad day".
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by XoPachi »

10 hours into Cladun Sengoku. Spotty, but I wonder why this series got consistently mixed reviews. I'm having a good bit of fun.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by To Far Away Times »

I started playing Final Fantsy VII: Rebirth yesterday. I can already tell this one’s going to be special.

When you hit the open world, and you can see how big it is and how detailed it is, and that song kicks in, man, all the feels. It got me with the same effect as leaving Midgar for the first time back in 1990’s.

The FFVII overworld song is one of my favorite songs ever.

The FFVII remake games have some incredibly slick layering of songs where the same song will blend seamlessly into a battle version and then back to the non-battle theme, and I absolutely love it. They do that with the overworld theme for minor battles and it’s just the coolest shit.

But I just really like this game. It plays exactly how I want, and it doesn’t linger on the “anime-isms” too long. It’s exactly what FFVII in high fidelity and modern production values should be.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by vol.2 »

Started playing Return to Castle Wolfenstein for the first time yesterday. I found it at a thrift store some forgotten number of years ago and never played it.

So far it's pretty fun and much better than I expected. There are a couple wonky things about how it controls like the leaning mechanic, but generally no big complaints. The difficultly is pretty good; I got wasted several times on the second level. There's plenty of health items scattered about, but if you aren't on toes you can get overwhelmed by nazis quite quickly.
sunnshiner
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by sunnshiner »

Virtua Fighter 5 FS on 360 (in Xenia). I am excited about games again, which is nice. It's been a while.
Last edited by sunnshiner on Wed Jan 15, 2025 8:00 am, edited 1 time in total.
Steven
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Steven »

Just finished Tales of Vesperia. I think I've figured out why some people say this is the best Tales game: they haven't played any of the better games in the series, which is most of them. In a vacuum, the game's fine, I guess.

It's nice to finally finish this game after getting the PS3 version at launch 15.5 years ago, although I don't think I can say that I particularly enjoyed it. For the first time in this series, I don't know if I will replay this game, or if I even want to. Normally when I have such a feeling, I'd do most of the more important side events/secret bosses/etc., but in this case I just wanted the game to stop. The timer says 68:44. I played the entire game on hard, which increases enemy HP by 250%. Does this mean that it would have taken half as long to finish the game if I'd played on normal?

I mostly played on hard because this game's dev team's previous game gives bosses an extra hi-ougi on hard difficulty and above, so I hoped that something similar would happen here. I'll complain about enemy hi-ougi implementation later (spoilers: it's kind of stupid), but apparently all that hard mode does in Vesperia is bloat enemy HP and cause enemies to chase the player and mostly ignore the AI party members, which ends up making the game easier in a way because you can run in circles while Rita safely annihilates everything all by herself. This even worked against the final boss. Why bother fighting the final boss and risk death when you can run in circles and let Rita and Raven handle everything without risk of taking a single hit? Yeah, great game design.

This game's story was... not very good. What even was this game's story? I just played it and I already forgot. The entire third act, which was extremely short, could have been cut from the game entirely and few would have noticed or cared. The second act is longer than twice the combined length of the first and third acts, which was very odd. The weirdest part of the whole game was
Spoiler
after you beat up Duke and he doesn't die! Instead, he... goes and chills in the forest with squirrels for some reason? Did this dude seriously go directly from final boss to forest hobo? WTF? This is such a weird ending. No, I didn't fight his third form. I didn't want to continue playing the game anymore, so I didn't bother.
Now I guess I have to complain about the late game bosses. This is by far my least favourite aspect of the game's mechanics. Near the 75%~80% point of the game, bosses start being able to just walk out of your combos whenever they feel like it. This is beyond stupid and renders a lot of multi-hit attacks with longer animations possibly more dangerous to the player than to the enemy because they can decide that they want to ignore the fact that you're beating the crap out of them and smack you around enough for you to die during your attack animations. I'm not sure how to feel about this. Yes, it sucked that a lot of late game bosses in previous games were punching bags that were rendered helpless by good combos, but I don't think that this was the best way to solve the problem. The final boss also seems to be able to teleport out of magic attacks, which is even more annoying. There is also Yuri's
Spoiler
one-on-one fight against Estelle. What was probably supposed to be some sort of highly emotional duel between the two of them was ruined by a combination of these mechanics and Estelle being more than strong enough to kill Yuri with a single combo, so the best way to do this fight is to use the item that you got from sleeping in the inn that one time and then running away and spamming Souhajin until Estelle runs out of HP.
I did complete all of the secret missions. These... exist. Most of them aren't especially interesting, but a few are.

I also have great disappointment about how hi-ougi work in this game. I generally feel that loop 1 player character hi-ougi are weak as shit and not really worth using in most cases. Yuri can do hi-ougi chains if you have the right skills equipped and you hit a cluster of enemies, which is cool and good for doing fatal strikes, but that's about it. As for the enemies... yeah. It's very annoying to attempt to dodge a hi-ougi cuz 3D space and all of that, but then it hits you anyway because bosses will teleport to you to guarantee that the hi-ougi hits. On hard, a certain final boss of act 2 can instantly kill your entire party at max HP immediately with a hi-ougi, which is obviously annoying. In order to solve this problem, I temporarily ditched Raven for Estelle, who has enough defense to survive with about 33~100 HP remaining. Overlimit Raise Dead spam afterwards resulted in me only using 2 Life Bottles for the entire fight, which was nice. Also, the dev team was too lazy and uncreative to bother giving Estelle and Tison their own hi-ougi and instead opted to recycle Philia's and Synch's hi-ougi instead. Really?

This game has music. I already forgot all of it. You probably don't remember any of it either. Sorry Sakuraba, but this is not a great soundtrack and I know you can do much better because you did in previous games. The sound balance is also extremely poor on the PC version, especially with the anime cutscenes being exceedingly quiet. The 3DS version of Tales of the Abyss has this same problem. This game also has acceptable graphics. That's all I have to say about these aspects.

So yeah, my overall rating of Tales of Vesperia is Play Tales of Destiny Director's Cut Instead Because It's Better At Everything.

My timing is quite excellent, given that Graces f rereleases in just a few days, so that will be quite nice. I'll probably get back to Rebirth after Graces f.
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ryu
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by ryu »

Steven wrote: Mon Jan 13, 2025 7:29 am Just finished Tales of Vesperia. I think I've figured out why some people say this is the best Tales game: they haven't played any of the better games in the series, which is most of them. In a vacuum, the game's fine, I guess.
I'm not sure I ever heard anybody claim Vesperia to be best in the series. It's got its strengths and weaknesses and I'd rate it somewhere below Symphonia, maybe Abyss even.
Steven wrote: Mon Jan 13, 2025 7:29 am I mostly played on hard because this game's dev team's previous game gives bosses an extra hi-ougi on hard difficulty and above, so I hoped that something similar would happen here. I'll complain about enemy hi-ougi implementation later (spoilers: it's kind of stupid), but apparently all that hard mode does in Vesperia is bloat enemy HP and cause enemies to chase the player and mostly ignore the AI party members, which ends up making the game easier in a way because you can run in circles while Rita safely annihilates everything all by herself. This even worked against the final boss. Why bother fighting the final boss and risk death when you can run in circles and let Rita and Raven handle everything without risk of taking a single hit? Yeah, great game design.
Definitely sounds like hard mode breaks the game. Although the free movement feature has been a problem in Abyss too where avoiding attacks was way too easy in comparison to Symphonia.
Steven wrote: Mon Jan 13, 2025 7:29 am This game's story was... not very good. What even was this game's story? I just played it and I already forgot.
Vesperia's story is incredibly weak for a Tales game. I really liked the characters however. On average probably even more than the one's in Graces.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Squire Grooktook »

XoPachi wrote: Sat Jan 11, 2025 4:09 pm 10 hours into Cladun Sengoku. Spotty, but I wonder why this series got consistently mixed reviews. I'm having a good bit of fun.
Ages ago when Cladun x2 came out on Steam I remember everyone complaining about the price, which I thought was dumb because it was a pretty fun little game with a lot of content.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Steven »

ryu wrote: Mon Jan 13, 2025 9:36 am
Steven wrote: Mon Jan 13, 2025 7:29 am Just finished Tales of Vesperia. I think I've figured out why some people say this is the best Tales game: they haven't played any of the better games in the series, which is most of them. In a vacuum, the game's fine, I guess.
I'm not sure I ever heard anybody claim Vesperia to be best in the series. It's got its strengths and weaknesses and I'd rate it somewhere below Symphonia, maybe Abyss even.
I've seen it a few times. It's a fine game on its own, but compared to other entries in its own series, I'd put this game (and Symphonia) near the bottom of the list. Not AT the bottom of the list because that's reserved for stuff like Tales of VS and Tales of the Tempest, and there is a big difference between the quality of Vesperia and VS, but near the bottom. As for the problems, it looks like you've already discovered one of the biggest issues:
ryu wrote: Mon Jan 13, 2025 9:36 am
Steven wrote: Mon Jan 13, 2025 7:29 am I mostly played on hard because this game's dev team's previous game gives bosses an extra hi-ougi on hard difficulty and above, so I hoped that something similar would happen here. I'll complain about enemy hi-ougi implementation later (spoilers: it's kind of stupid), but apparently all that hard mode does in Vesperia is bloat enemy HP and cause enemies to chase the player and mostly ignore the AI party members, which ends up making the game easier in a way because you can run in circles while Rita safely annihilates everything all by herself. This even worked against the final boss. Why bother fighting the final boss and risk death when you can run in circles and let Rita and Raven handle everything without risk of taking a single hit? Yeah, great game design.
Definitely sounds like hard mode breaks the game. Although the free movement feature has been a problem in Abyss too where avoiding attacks was way too easy in comparison to Symphonia.
Symphonia had free run fully implemented about halfway through development, but they realized very quickly that it upset the game's balance quite severely, so they decided to remove it and design the next game around having it. They somewhat succeeded. Abyss is a game that's either pretty easy or very difficult, depending on what difficulty you choose, with Unknown on the Japanese PS2 version being close to unplayable by the devs' own admission. They tried to fix this with Vesperia by making almost every playable character slow as hell. Did it work? Uh... not really. All it really did was make the battle system feel sluggish and clunky in a way that the previous 3D games didn't.

You can still abuse the hell out of free run in Vesperia, though it largely means running in circles, which is not exactly a lot of fun. I've heard that on normal difficulty the enemies won't attempt to mob the player like on hard. I imagine that playing as Rita on hard is super annoying unless you have another human playing with you.

I beat the last boss on my first attempt because of this. I went in treating it like a Shin Megami Tensei boss: see how the boss attacks and figure out the behaviour and all of that stuff and then come back later with a strategy built around that. What ended up happening was that I got the boss to about 40% HP and ran out of life bottles, but I didn't want to redo the fight, so I decided to stay back and realized that the boss chased me and ignored the rest of my party, so I ran in circles while Rita, Raven, and Repede took care of everything for me. Once I switched to this strategy, the boss never attacked anyone for the rest of the fight. Once the boss got to 10,000 HP left, I set my allies to defend, used my overlimit during an incredibly well-timed Tidal Wave from AI Rita, threw out the fastest ougi that Yuri has in order to kill the boss with his hi-ougi, and that was it.

Overall, you could, depending on what you value in a Tales battle system, make extremely convincing cases for this battle system's changes from Abyss and Symphonia being a net positive, net negative, or having enough positive and negative aspects for them to cancel each other out and leave you with something that's relatively neutral.

Symphonia has the best difficulty curve and balance of the three, but lacks flexibility due to the T <-> S system preventing you from learning everything and also lack of free run for the player, even though your AI allies can use it, and it also has a rule that you can only have one mid-level or high-level spell out at once, which is annoying and restrictive.

Abyss is by far the most fun of the three to actually play and has probably the smartest AI allies of all of them, but it can be too easy at times because free run is broken and the AD Skill system is obtuse and vague without a guide. This is the game that's pretty well-known for being the one where you travel around the world beating up birds, bees, and wolves, but you also fight the same bosses a bunch of times, which can lead to it maybe feeling a bit repetitive, but I don't mind that much because they managed to keep it interesting by adding new hi-ougi or whatever and also by moving the story forward through these boss fights. Guy is also hilariously broken to a ridiculous extent in the Japanese PS2 version.

Vesperia fixes the AD Skill system's lack of transparency, but also greatly restricts the player's movement speed and the ability to set skills, at least during the first playthrough, and because characters won't have a lot of skills to perform basic actions until at least 1/3 of the way through the game when the proper weapons show up, it constantly feels like you're playing with a bunch of weights tied to your character that you can't be rid of until the game decides to allow you to do so. I never once felt like I was able to take off all of the weights simultaneously. Some people would call this balance. I might, which means I might not. I also feel like the antagonists didn't really do that much as far telling the story through boss fights, which is something that both previous Team Symphonia games did much better. In Vesperia, "important" (by this game's pretty non-existent standard) bad guys will often just show up like HEY I'M HERE NOW SUDDENLY LET'S FIGHT and then it's over and you never see them again even if they didn't die. Super weird.

Then there's Graces, which made free run completely terrible, so there is also that. That's a different dev team with a very different design philosophy, but it's a super fun battle system.
ryu wrote: Mon Jan 13, 2025 9:36 am
Steven wrote: Mon Jan 13, 2025 7:29 am This game's story was... not very good. What even was this game's story? I just played it and I already forgot.
Vesperia's story is incredibly weak for a Tales game. I really liked the characters however. On average probably even more than the one's in Graces.
The story is barely there at all. I think the two stories in the series that stand out most to me are Abyss and Phantasia. Phantasia's ending's whole
Spoiler
"Oh fuck, we accidentally committed genocide by killing Dhaos"
thing was great. Dhaos is a really cool dude. He's barely in the game at all, but when he's there he's awesome. Love that guy. I hope that the unpublished Tale Phantasia actually gets released someday so people (meaning me) can read it and see what the story of the game was supposed to be before they chopped out all but the last third of the book's story to make the game.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Immryr »

Caves of Qud

I've been playing a load of this since the full release. Game is incredible, if potentially incredibly frustrating. I don't have any experience playing this kind of traditional rogue-like, beyond Shiren the Wanderer, and this game is so much bigger in scope than that it's hard for me to comprehend that it's a roguelike.

The exploration is the main thing that drew me in. It's so easy to die if you get complacent that it always feels super tense.

I spent quite a long time playing in classic, full roguelike, mode. Dying over and over again and not making it much past the early game (Bethesda Susa was the furthest I made it). I'm now playing in roleplay mode where you get some checkpointing, but the game is otherwise the same, just to check out what horrors await me a bit later in the game.

I'd highly recommend this one to anyone who likes games with a big focus on navigation of dangerous areas.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by BareKnuckleRoo »

Steven wrote: Mon Jan 13, 2025 1:00 pmDhaos is a really cool dude. He's barely in the game at all, but when he's there he's awesome. Love that guy.
He was the first of a lot of good, but ultimately extremist Tales villians who the heroes could've very well sympathized with if not for their methods.

I like that one Radiant Mythology game where Dhaos appears with a superpowered version of Tetra Spell that casts 4 high tier elemental spells one after the other with full damage. Crazy stuff.
Symphonia had free run fully implemented about halfway through development, but they realized very quickly that it upset the game's balance quite severely
I can see why, Abyss makes it very powerful for a lot of encounters. I'd rather it be more like Abyss than Vesperia though, Vesperia felt like everyone was so darn slow that evasion for anyone not named Repede was extremely hard.

I think Graces' implementation works well. Side-stepping is a good way of allowing the mobility to move in a 3D environment and dodge, without giving everyone broken constant high speed running in Abyss, or outrageously nerfed movement speed in Vesperia. Symphonia's speeds are actually pretty good and I think a sidestep, even a slow one to prevent getting cornered, would've solved that problem. It's especially weird given Regal has a proximity based heal spell that's effectively useless except for self-healing since he can't reliably move to any individual party member.

I've seen a hack of Symphonia with free run implemented, I wonder if free run is actually still in the game for player and was simply inaccessible/disabled, and all the hack did was make it accessible.
Symphonia has the best difficulty curve and balance of the three, but lacks flexibility due to the T <-> S system preventing you from learning everything
I actually like the idea of experimenting with character builds where not all skills are accessible, I just think it's poorly implemented and tying it to EX Skills sucks. It's actually not hard locked to EX Skills settings as you can learn the moves you want then switch EX Gem setup, but it's a tedious process swapping between T and S to get the specific moves you want, fighting battles so your T - S meter changes and reflects the new EX Gem settings, and if you find you don't like the skills, experimenting and switching back. It's really tedious and especially for Raine, whose multitarget heals are generally way better, you don't want to go through one type only to discover the other's way better. It's a lot less of a hassle if you know what skills are under which type and which ones are most worthwhile, but it's still super clunky compared to games with skill trees that allow you to pay to quickly respecialize your skills if you decide to experiment and aren't happy with the results.
and [Symphonia] also has a rule that you can only have one mid-level or high-level spell out at once, which is annoying and restrictive.
I'm sure you know this, but for other folks this is usually called the Spell Queue, where only one mid or high level spell can be on the field for each side at a time (player and enemy) and if one's animating the game will wait before allowing another one to be cast, even if the caster's finished the casting time. This is in Symphonia, Tales of Destiny 2, and I think Tales of Eternia? It's why in Symphonia especially, where spell damage isn't as high as in ToD2, that you don't want a spellcasting heavy team because it interferes with healing. I don't think it's in Rebirth, and it wasn't in Phantasia or Destiny because in those games mid and high tier spells pause the game to animate, so you can't have two spells overlapping together.
[Abyss's] AD Skill system is obtuse and vague without a guide
I get what they were after. On a first playthrough on Normal, you equip whatever cores help the stats you want and just kinda end up with skills that reflect the bonus points you've earned. Later playthroughs, if you inherit cores, you then just learn a bunch of AD Skills from using cores that raise all stats at the same time, making the process hassle free, or simply inherit AD Skills from a previous playthrough. It's not awful, but I think the skill list doesn't actually show how many points are needed to trigger each skill, so the only way of figuring it out without a guide is trial and error, but you're not meant to worry about hunting specific skills anyways on a first playthrough.
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