What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

[ryu]

Played Tales of Berseria for the first time for about 90 minutes last night. I see what they were going for with the battle system, but I don't think I like it very much at all.

Combat is its weakest part next to the linearity and lack of a world map. I thought it was worth playing for the characters and their interactions alone though

[Steven]

I forgot that this is part of the post-Hearts no world map era. I wonder why they decided to ditch the world map. Chasing the open world trend, perhaps. It will always feel strange to not have a world map in these games, in any case.

But yes, this battle system was designed by the guy who made the battle systems for all of the post-PS1 Phantasia 2D battle systems, which are the best ones, so I'm surprised at how much I dislike it. Maybe he has more difficulty doing 3D stuff. Kind of surprised this is even given the Linear Motion Battle System name at all. I'm not going to play this game now, though. I just decided to check it out for a bit to see how it is. Gotta play Zestiria first anyway. I'm sure Zestiria will get similar treatment soon enough, and it needs it way more than Berseria.

[LordHypnos]

I finished Bram: Bloodmoon (Pico-8), and I think I would revise my statement on the difficulty in that, it is fairly difficult, but compared to the original LoZ, it makes finding secrets much easier, because there is a chime when there is a secret, and there's really only 2 tools that can actually reveal secrets. There are also 2 weapon/armor upgrades, and especially the second one makes the game significantly easier. I started playing through it again, and I think I would recommend grabbing the first upgrade after the first dungeon, and maybe waiting until before the final dungeon to grab the second one. This also works pretty well with the locations of things. Finally, it's shorter, so that also kind of affects the difficulty, just fewer secrets total that you need to find. Aside from that, like LoZ, it does not show you a map in game, so it's highly recommended to make your own map as you play to make sure that you don't miss any areas (there is an already started map in the manual that you can print out). Unfortunately I seem to have lost the map from my first playthrough already, which is very annoying. The action is similarly difficult or a bit more difficult than LoZ I think. I guess my last comment would be that the toolset is a bit underwhelming compared to most Zelda games, but the creator is having to contend with the limitations of the Pico-8. That being said, I feel like the boots and the ring (which allows you to jump) serve pretty similar roles, and the candle and the dynamite also serve pretty similar roles, so maybe there could have been a bit of room for more depth of gameplay. Here's a link to it on the Lexaloffle site if anyone is interested in checking it out.

On a related note, I also started playing through the original Legend of Zelda, and I do feel like the atmosphere is not really matched by the later games (though note that my experience is only with the 2D games). It's also very different in design with a much higher emphasis on secrets rather than puzzles, and a higher action difficulty, obviously. There's definitely something really special about it, that's for sure. Annoyingly, I can't find the second dungeon, but I did beat 3-5, I think, or maybe I left off on 5, this was kind of a while back.

I'm also still in the midst of Oracle of Ages, which started very strong IMO, but at the moment it feels kind of slow, and there are way too many mini-games you need to slog through. Some pretty sick music in Skull Dungeon. Funnily enough, Level 4 is also really good in Oracle of Seasons.

[it290]

Nice recommendation on Bloodmoon! I'm always looking for Pico-8 games that are a little meatier like this one, any other recommendations? Will probably be playing thru on a plane Tuesday...

[LordHypnos]

Nice recommendation on Bloodmoon! I'm always looking for Pico-8 games that are a little meatier like this one, any other recommendations? Will probably be playing thru on a plane Tuesday...

I haven't played too many Pico-8 games yet. The other one that I really liked was Lab Cat, a sokoban-like game that has portals and lasers. It's definitely not quite as grand of a scope as Bloodmoon, but it has a few achievements, and some built-in support for speedrunning for a bit more longevity. I think it was 32 stages or thereabouts.

Because this is shmups forum, I would recommend checking out Kalikan, which is a fairly short shmup that's heavily influenced by Dodonpachi, and Praxis Fighter X, another pretty fun shmup.

[AGermanArtist]

Still plugging away at ARC Raiders. Managed to complete all 66 missions and the Raider Deck, and I'm 2/3 complete page 5 of the Expedition requirements. Now that the pressure to get missions completed is done, I've taken to camping extracts from the hills on Dam Battlegrounds with an Osprey sniper rifle, not to kill random Raiders, but to kill extract campers. They're obvious, they mill around an extract point and don't call the elevator. So far, so good. That aside, I'm taking down Leapers and Rocketeers with ease now, I'm actually killing these with the Anvil pistol, so it's time to move on to some of the bigger ARC.
It's going to take some major grinding to get past the fear of taking Hullcrackers and Wolfpacks out in my loadout, in order to do this.
The game is suffering from its own success at the minute, there is an influx of dickheads who think it's Gears and they're fucking it up for players enjoying the game as it was intended to be played.
I don't think it would compromise the game to have an additional PvE mode where these people can be avoided. The player pool/inclusion of cross-play seems to negate any concerns about splitting the player-base.

[Marc]

Picked up a softmodded PS2 with HD dirt cheap from a mate and a set of component cables, gone through a few faves on the Capcom, Sega Ages and Taito collections, and with the addition of a Namco arcade stick think I’ve got the ideal setup to be tackling some of these games properly for the first time. I’ve not a clue with resolutions though – some of the Ages stuff offers 240p 480i 480poutput, the Capcom 2 progressive scan – which seems to offer a less flickery picture at the expense of forcing widescreen – is there a recommended default across the board (playing on a Toshiba 36ZP46 which I think is an EDTV)?

[To Far Away Times]

Been playing Lumines Arise the last couple of days and got the journey 1CC tonight.

Lumines on PSP is an all time classic and I sunk countless hours into it. The only thing is by the end I had figured out “the pattern” and the game had become a lot easier.

I’m somewhat mixed on Arise. The backgrounds are the best they’ve ever been and the soundtrack is on point. The final level is really tremendous and sends the game out on a high note. I like the little transitions between stages, it’s a lot fairer than trying to quickly read the change in block shapes on the fly. But with that said this game has some major visibility issues. The original Lumines had that problem on a couple stages, but it wasn’t too bad. Lumines Arise’s difficulty seems to be driven by how easy or difficult it is to read the blocks. Really not a fan of that. The lantern stage can go to hell, sometimes I feel like I’m just guessing. The umbrella/ Japanese beach one is super hard to see too. Ugh.

The new burst mechanic is pretty fun. A sequel needs something new or different, and I think that delivers here. Used defensively, it’s a get out of jail free card. Probably a bit too powerful since it can be used to essentially blow up a section of the board on command.

Overall, I still like the original Lumines the best, but a little bit of clean up on the visibility issues on Arise would go a long way because everything else is excellent.

[XoPachi]

ction of the board on command.

Overall, I still like the original Lumines the best, but a little bit of clean up on the visibility issues on Arise would go a long way because everything else is excellent.

Yeah Arise is really nice, but it's not the best. I like the new Burst mechanic and my Christ is it smooth. But ever since Electronic Symphony, the visibility is just really bad for a lot of skins.

[Steven]

Restarted Tales of Symphonia. I thought I missed something very important, something that I will probably need to get the ending that I want, which is the one ending that they made way harder to get in the later ports than it was originally. Turns out that I might not have missed that at all and ended up wasting a few hours by restarting, but I guess it's fine since I was able to do a little better financially in terms of choosing what weapons to get, as I knew in advance what I'd need to bring to get free upgrades. That's nice.

BTW WTF is up with equipment stats in this game? Did the devs just not think this through at all? Why is it that, nearly 10 hours into the game, I am still finding equipment in stores that increases def/magic def/magic attack by literally one single fucking point over the starting equipment, or two points at best? What is the point of this? To get the player to use the (rather limited) upgrade system, no doubt, but so far only physical weapons have had significant stat increases and everything else is mostly a waste of money. I'm also drowning in money somehow, which sucks because there isn't even anything good to spend it on. God this game's design sucks lol

Friendly AI is also uniquely horrid. Why do magic people back away to use magic but then get closer to use magic sometimes? Why not just stay the hell away at all times like I set them to do? Kratos also loves to do nothing but use First Aid the moment anyone is below 100% HP unless I disable it. Like come on dude you're specifically set to fight on the front line, so get the hell up here and help me instead of sitting in the rear spamming First Aid every time someone gets even a tiny scratch. Colette also loves to spam Angel Feather and drain all of her TP and become useless unless I disable that too because her AI is even worse. Even with all of these annoying aspects, this game is very, very easy. I remembered this game having decent difficulty, but apparently I was wrong because I had to turn it up to not be bored, which defeated the purpose of playing it on normal to get it over with faster.

This game also has some very, very questionable (which means bad) Japanese voice acting at times. Once I heard Kiria's awful voice acting, I vaguely recalled seeing some very harsh criticism of her performance somewhere, and it certainly deserved it. It's pretty rare for Japanese voice acting to be outright bad, but it happened here. There is more stuff I could complain about, but I'll stop here for now.

[Marc]

Been playing Lumines Arise the last couple of days and got the journey 1CC tonight.

Lumines on PSP is an all time classic and I sunk countless hours into it. The only thing is by the end I had figured out “the pattern” and the game had become a lot easier.

I’m somewhat mixed on Arise. The backgrounds are the best they’ve ever been and the soundtrack is on point. The final level is really tremendous and sends the game out on a high note. I like the little transitions between stages, it’s a lot fairer than trying to quickly read the change in block shapes on the fly. But with that said this game has some major visibility issues. The original Lumines had that problem on a couple stages, but it wasn’t too bad. Lumines Arise’s difficulty seems to be driven by how easy or difficult it is to read the blocks. Really not a fan of that. The lantern stage can go to hell, sometimes I feel like I’m just guessing. The umbrella/ Japanese beach one is super hard to see too. Ugh.

The new burst mechanic is pretty fun. A sequel needs something new or different, and I think that delivers here. Used defensively, it’s a get out of jail free card. Probably a bit too powerful since it can be used to essentially blow up a section of the board on command.

Overall, I still like the original Lumines the best, but a little bit of clean up on the visibility issues on Arise would go a long way because everything else is excellent.

Good to hear, be picking this up tomorrow. Kind of what I expected - I found Tetris Effect pretty similar with the visibility etc.

[AGermanArtist]

Tetris Effect baked is the trippiest thing I've ever played - the synergy of inputs, visual and audio feedback is light years ahead of Rez.

[Sima Tuna]

Sir, this is a christian shmups forum and I would never partake of the weeds. I watch Reefer Madness every weekend to remind myself of the evils of green fronds.

[To Far Away Times]

Finished up Ender Magnolia today.

Top tier Metroidvania, that one. I've always preferred my search action games to lean on the "-vania" side of Metroidvania, with heavy vibes, light rpg mechanics, customizable combat builds, and GOAT level soundtracks.

The soundtrack here by Mili (they worked on some obscure cartoon called Ghost in the Shell?) is stunning and perfect for this type of game. I love how areas have a theme and connected areas will build upon that theme by adding vocals and such. So slick.

This is such a friction-less game too. You get your movement abilities very early on, the map keeps track of everything for you, you can warp to any save point, there are no corpse runs, you keep all your items and experience when you die, save points before every major boss, and so on. Despite relatively little friction in the mechanics, enemies and bosses can be quite challenging. You'll die a lot. Boss fights are very good and most require several attempts, but nothing insurmountable. When you finally get a boss down it's super fun to stand your ground and parry all that shit and just absolutely style all over them.

Worthy of the hype with the 97% Overwhelmingly Positive ranking on Steam, and my pick for best search action game that doesn't have the word "Castlevania" somewhere in the title.

[XoPachi]

Completed Ninja Gaiden Black. Playing Ninja Gaiden II. WOW this is hard.

[AGermanArtist]

The new Marvel beater. Pretty great. May report back after I've played more than 20 mins of arcade mode and played a bit of co-op, so far very happy with it.

[Sima Tuna]

Completed Ninja Gaiden Black. Playing Ninja Gaiden II. WOW this is hard.

It's a substantial speed increase. You really have to dial up your own aggression so that you alpha strike enemies before they can do anything. NGB is more of a measured game, where you can observe and react to enemies. NG2 is more chaotic and the "flow state" is about establishing dominance early and preempting enemies or forcing them to react to you. The execution system allows you to delete enemies from the field regardless of their health bar, as long as they're missing a limb. So you can use any attack with a high decap rate as a shorthand instant kill.

Unfortunately, both games kinda have the issue that spamming charge attacks is way too strong. I wish they could get balance patched in a way that either totally removes charge attacks or rebalances them to be harder to do. Or not fully invulnerable. Something.

[AGermanArtist]

NG2 is simply a chef's kiss of a game. Bon appetit.

[To Far Away Times]

NG2 is *the* character action game.

Sure it’s not perfect, but damn if it isn’t good at what it does.

I also like the quote about it being the only game where the enemies aren’t locked in a room with you, but you’re locked in a room full of enemies. So true.

[it290]

The new Marvel beater. Pretty great. May report back after I've played more than 20 mins of arcade mode and played a bit of co-op, so far very happy with it.

I was really disappointed in this game. Movesets are pretty shallow, most of the characters feel samey, only a few have grapples, the voice acting is really repetitive, the level up system is totally unnecessary and actively sucks fun out of the game, and the final boss is utterly underwhelming

Spoiler

(TMNT at least gave us a big setpiece at the end, here you just get a totally bog standard boss fight with only one phase).

The tag system lets you build up some pretty big combos, but most enemies are either total punching bags or have super armor that makes them a chore to fight. I have about 4 hours in and I really doubt I'll be playing this anymore unless I have people over who just want to bash through a game. Absolum is about a million times superior.

[AGermanArtist]

With this and Shredder's Revenge, I don't think they were aiming for anything other than a modern arcade beater/update to the old Konami games. I think they succeeded. Not a lot of depth, but something to have a bit of fun with solo/co-op.
Absolum is the superior game, but you can't play as Wolverine. There's room for both.

[XoPachi]

I also like the quote about it being the only game where the enemies aren’t locked in a room with you, but you’re locked in a room full of enemies. So true.

Oh no

I am DEFINITELY the one locked in with enemies. :(

[it290]

With this and Shredder's Revenge, I don't think they were aiming for anything other than a modern arcade beater/update to the old Konami games. I think they succeeded. Not a lot of depth, but something to have a bit of fun with solo/co-op.
Absolum is the superior game, but you can't play as Wolverine. There's room for both.

I can (somewhat) forgive the lack of depth, but this feels even less deep than Shredder's Revenge and also has a lot less charm in the audiovisual department. There are very few setpieces and also little in the way of variations on the core gameplay — no vehicle levels, bonus levels, etc. Instead you get a bunch of traps which are mostly just unfun to deal with (seriously, who thought it would be a good idea to create a level where the ground is 50% covered with traps that make your character move super slowly?). There's also very little vertical depth in most areas which makes 4-player mode way too chaotic.

[TransatlanticFoe]

Ugh they've leaned hard on super armour again have they? Not having grapple attacks for every character seems overly limiting too. Presumbly you have Street Fighter style motions for special moves?

From what I've read arcade mode is a sensible length, with branching paths instead of having to play through the entire story mode in one go. That at least sounds better?

[it290]

No Street Fighter style inputs. Each character has a weak attack string (some with alternate versions), a strong attack (which is a grapple for the characters that have one), a charge attack, a super attack, air attacks, and one of either a dodge or a block/parry. Each character also has a passive ability, some of which are basically useless (Storm), and others that are quite strong (Wolverine).

[Sima Tuna]

I've noticed a trend of games in the wake of Shredder's Revenge which seem to shamelessly target nostalgia and little else. There was that power rangers one, the cleaning-up-trash-heroes one (I forget the name of that obscure ass IP) and I think a few others I've forgotten. Now we've got Marvel. Aside from the opportunity to play as some less favored capes, like my boy Nova, I don't see much point to this. If everyone said the mechanics were rock-solid then I'd be more inclined to give it a chance, but eh.

As an old man, I must always be cautious of marketers and advertising executives attempting to exploit my nostalgia to steal my money.

[Klatrymadon]

Yeah, bmups being "back" largely through 80s toy license revivals is really sad and deflating, and it's not showing any signs of being a minor blip — there are also He-Man and Toxic Avenger games on the way! It's stifling to the genre as an expressive form and I worry it's creating a sort of pseudohistory that this is what beat-'em-ups were always primarily about...

(That said, I'm not a total misery-guts — I played the Marvel demo and it was alright!)

I've spent a few hours with Absolum and it's stronger than I was expecting. The roguelite/synergy elements haven't led to any extremely overpowered 'builds' yet, and usually only give minor buffs to the main moves, so I'm still having to play the thing, which is nice. I also like its approach to "run variance" for the most part — the branching paths reveal themselves over time and usually provide a meaningful reason to deviate from the path you took last time. But as I said in a discord chat recently, I think I'm just looking for a completely different emphasis from bmups — it's probably pointless to expect a return to Final Fight but I wish modern ones understood the desperation and catharsis of controlling a crowd a little better. I'm getting my arse kicked by the mid-game bosses but I never feel under pressure in the stages because I can always just hit da bricks with a dash or some other get-out-of-jail-free manoeuvre. Anyway, it's got its hooks into me despite my aversion to anything with hour-long runs, so it must be doing something right.

[it290]

It's definitely easy to create a build that steamrolls Absolum, but you can always just not build your character that way, and for the most part you're not going to get a fully broken build online until you're at least 2/3 of the way through the game. There's still a ton of room for skill expression with the clash mechanics, and honestly it's more fun to play that way than just using something totally broken. There are also handicap sliders for both player and enemy damage, so it's pretty easy to dial into your preferred difficulty level. Some of the optional things you'll encounter during runs are pretty brutal — the thing that makes every enemy an elite for a whole area is rough as hell!

That said, I feel you on the crowd control and herding thing. I wonder if that indie Double Dragon game on the Neo-Geo features more of that? Or Vengeance Hunters? Haven't had the chance to try either unfortunately.

[Sima Tuna]

Are you talking about Final Vendetta? Final Vendetta is legit, although it has some balance issues.

[Josh128]

Dragon Warrior 2, NES. Last played it around 35 years ago and lost a game due to save issue, never picked up again. Other than the excruciating amount of random battles you must slog through, I must say Im enjoying it quite a bit. Have the ship now and Im kind of wandering, wondering where TF I should be going at this point, lol.