02-29-2024, 01:59 PM
(This post was last modified: 02-29-2024, 02:01 PM by Potato.)
(02-29-2024, 09:31 AM)chronovore wrote: Started Ubisoft's bomba-bomb-bomb Immortals: Rise of Phoenix Fenix Fenyx
It's actually a good game, not least of all because it's a pretty straightforward Zelda Breath of the Wild clone. There's no Lego stuff like TOTK, but there's a lot of climbing-with-stamina-limitations, pretty decent melee combat, and NO WEAPON BREAKAGE. So that's a win. The character feels pretty generic, I'm wondering how every god, demigod, and many creatures have more personality than the Player Character.
But, yeah, pretty fun so far!
It's in my backlog. Doubt it will get out of it, but I would like to try it just for comparison's sake.
(02-29-2024, 01:59 PM)Potato wrote: (02-29-2024, 09:31 AM)chronovore wrote: Started Ubisoft's bomba-bomb-bomb Immortals: Rise of Phoenix Fenix Fenyx
It's actually a good game, not least of all because it's a pretty straightforward Zelda Breath of the Wild clone. There's no Lego stuff like TOTK, but there's a lot of climbing-with-stamina-limitations, pretty decent melee combat, and NO WEAPON BREAKAGE. So that's a win. The character feels pretty generic, I'm wondering how every god, demigod, and many creatures have more personality than the Player Character.
But, yeah, pretty fun so far!
It's in my backlog. Doubt it will get out of it, but I would like to try it just for comparison's sake.
I'm curious what people's hopes were for it. I don't remember UBI hyping it much, which lines up with my general disparaging of Marketing in games, where they'll only ever bet on what they consider to be a sure thing. When a new title doesnt look like an easy win, they'll let it flounder without support, then point to the low sales as "we were right all along."
Did you buy it at launch, or was it heavily discounted?
Heavily discounted impulse purchase.
My hopes were that it would give me a good Zelda-like adventure, but I never got around to it and then TotK came along and made it redundant.
Yeah, the building mechanic in TOTK is fantastic. I hadn’t realized how much I have missed something like that. Banjo Kazooie Nuts and Bolts was a revelation in its day.
1 user liked this post: Nintex
The best part about Nuts & Bolts is the DLC with the meta commentary from the developers.
The latter parts of the base game already had some of it but more subtle.
I don't think Microsoft even read the script because it was absolutely savage. 
NPCs would say things like: "There was supposed to a boss battle here but they stopped paying the contractors so you'll just have to drive through these 4 gates again instead"
"Why repeat the same challenge that is terrible game design"
"They were terrible contractors"
It was all these lines about how they were out of budget, behind schedule, hated management and how nothing worked the way it should've.
And finished up with all the NPCs saying it was probably their last game anyway and not giving a fuck if they got the boot.
Finished IMMORTALS: Rise of Fenyx last night. The game's final level changes it from a very chill, open-world, player has complete freedom of movement model to instead having exactly one path up the final mountain, loads of fall-to-death, freeze-to-death (path related, not gear), required puzzle solutions, and forced fights.
Everything the player could previously CHOOSE to engage are instead MANDATORY and must be addressed in the presented order.
The path "up" the mountain also features several roads which lead down the mountain, so I almost checked an online guide to make sure I hadn't missed something. Previous 40 hours of gameplay was one thing, final 2-3 hours are punishment-enforced fixed path.
Final vault is a review of previous ones, but with untuned mechanics and poorly designed Checkpoint markers, leading to a couple spots where the game left me with no way out, including no way to die and reset to last checkpoint. I had to re-load from Save Data.
Finished, then deleted before I had to waffle on a clean-up pass of remaining Trophies. For some reason, Playstation Trophies don't compel me like Xbox Achievements did; maybe it's that also-ran flavor to them?
1 user liked this post: Nintex
Didn't play it but I did notice review scores dropping significantly post launch when it got 9/10 reviews. Seems like it falls off after the first 10 - 20 hours or so like most Ubi games. Not seeing on it on many recommendation lists either despite it being cheap.
TOTK on the other hand still throws new mechanics into the mix 170 hours in. Also the number of unique quest challenges and shrine puzzle mechanics they use only 1 time in the game is just insane.
Reeks of a game that management lost faith in that was hurriedly finished off and taken to market. I seem to recall it being sent out to die at launch.
Yeah, your guys' impressions match mine. There is a LOT to say about how much they got right on the main gameplay, and then the last level just faceplants badly.
I wonder about enemy variety also feeling rushed. There are palette-swapped versions of each enemy type, but I could not discern any difference in behavior. It's likely that the only difference is HP amount, and damage dealt.
Addicted to Balatro. Love how it keeps it simple.
Still playing Tears of the Kingdom. Does this game ever end I wonder?
Today I got rid of the Gleeok on the Bridge of Hylia which I had forgotten about and restored Lurelin village with Bolson.
Also found the full Spoiler: (click to show)(click to hide) Fierce Diety Armor set and sword.
134 shrines at this point.
03-31-2024, 05:51 AM
(This post was last modified: 03-31-2024, 05:52 AM by Kevtones.)
Still playing TOTK too. Went from 44-71% complete after beating it. Not bored yet and I actually enjoy the post game roughly as much. The Hero’s Path mechanism for exploration is just remarkable.
FF7-2 is really nice. Polishe, fun and honestly when I got to the open world section I felt some feels. They did a really nice job honoring the hype.
Infinite Wealth is great so far. My wife and are super invested in Tokyo Vice atm so I’m waiting for that to finish to jump back in.
Balatro is the devil’s work. First game since Slay the Spire to hook me in on ‘runs.
Also, good to be back.
Grabbed the first two Lands of Lore games on GOG since I found my old instruction manuals. Getting the cd-roms to run is probably a real ordeal at this point. Reading through the extra booklet, "The History of the Lands of Lore", now.
Must've been at least 25 years since I last played this at my uncle's house. Should be fun.
First game holds up pretty well. It's basically as accessible as something like Legend of Grimrock. Having an actual world to explore instead of just a single big dungeon is pretty cool as well.
04-05-2024, 09:22 PM
(This post was last modified: 04-05-2024, 09:24 PM by Nintex.)
Crossed the 140 shrine mark as I'm nearing the end I'm collecting my thoughts on this game
- TOTK relies far less on parry than BOTW did. Sometimes I even forget I have that move.
- While Link has an entirely new set of abilities 95% of the enemies are still limited to what they could do in BOTW. In fact they removed the biggest threat in the overworld, the Guardians. It feels more like raiding bandit camps than having enemies appear naturally in the world like in BOTW or Elden Ring
- The Yiga vehicle fights are nearly a 1:1 copy from Nuts & Bolts gameplay but you can easily cheese these with a bow and arrow, in fact most of the enemies in the game can be defeated quite easily with strong bows
- While I really enjoy the caves, wells and underground prisons and ruins, breaking big rock formations is sort of meh, the fact that nearly all rock formations drop swords with stones to make hammers sort of shows that they didn't really know how to properly balance this with weapons breaking
- Unlike BOTW the game seems to have multiple progression blocks for certain quest and event triggers, I could clearly sense that at some point I was too early in Kakariko and Hyrule Castle, something that was impossible in BOTW.
- There are far less obtuse shrine quests than in BOTW and the shrine quests are better. Even Shrines that have yet to appear are marked with Crystals, they don't just raise from the ground of out of nowhere
- The mech you get near the end of the story is by then no longer as helpful or impressive as it would've been halfway through
- The Depths sort of being the resource rich environment to collect better weapons doesn't really work because your weapons break quite easily so instead of gaining items you usually lose more than you find.
- Overall this is the case with most late game finds, for example another Link outfit Amiibo cap at level 1 is useless by the time you're able to collect it. You also can't level dark gear(?) which also makes it useless outside of the Gloom resistance or Sneak buffs.
All Shrines, All Light Roots, 359/900(?) Korok Seeds, only 1 King Gleeok left to defeat to get the final Sages Will and then I'm going to finish the fight and get the zeldussy. 
Shrines
- Most Shrines are great, including those where the main activity happens outside the Shrines. Overall I'm surprised by the lack of repetition. BOTW had a few too many 'combat' shrines, as well as a number of Shrines that were the same with just some changes to difficulty or layout.
- Only a handful don't show up on your sensor and thankfully still have clear quest indicators
- No Shrines that interact with other Shrines (BOTW had this)
- It seems to be either combat or puzzle, no combined combat+puzzle Shrines like in BOTW (or indeed very few)
- No Shrines that require you to go on item hunts across the world map, like the Mirror of Twilight in BOTW, these quests exist as Side Adventures
The Depths
- Finally a dark world in a 3D Zelda. Not seen since OOT
- Some Light Roots are quite well hidden, the fact that they match the Shrine locations on the surface makes it a bit easier
- Probably the weakest area of the game, almost like a roguelike Zelda experience
- Unlike the anti-grav areas in the sky there is nothing that really changes the gameplay outside of the Gloom
- A lot repetition, there's basically copy pasta boss arenas, Bokoblin/Moblin mining parties, mines, bigger mines, lightroots and 3 types of Yiga camps, only a handful of original areas
- Reminded me of Metroid Prime 2 with the gloom and more difficult enemies
- Should've been integrated more into the main map like in ALTTP, there a few story beats where you have to go through the depths to progress in the main game but most of it is entirely optional
- Not really worth exploring 100% there is just not much there outside the points of interest, there is an area below Lake Hylia where there is literally nothing
Anyway I used to play this game 'wrong', for the first 75% of playtime I saved up as many resources as I could and only used vehicles sparringly.
The right way to play is to use vehicles as disposable items (much like your weapons) and save a lot of time by auto-building them with Zonaite instead of vehicle parts.
That really sped up completing the remaining 25% especially in the depths.
04-18-2024, 09:53 PM
(This post was last modified: 04-18-2024, 09:54 PM by Nintex.)
Finished the Story of Tears of the Kingdom at 72.62% completion.
9.9/10
Probably the most anyone has ever squeezed out of 7 year old hardware in history.
The final sequence of the game was pretty good but I do feel it could've been better.
Spoiler: (click to show)(click to hide) There is no big dungeon at the end, just a fairly short underground area that leads to the boss fight with Ganondorf. This is something OOT did better, you get Ganons tower with a bunch of challenges based on all the elements and dungeons and in The Wind Waker there was the 'boss rush' which was pretty neat. In this game you fight a bunch of enemies much like in Skyward Sword (but this lacks the urgency of saving Zelda from Demise) and then you face off with Ganondorf. The bosses show up again but only in a cutscene. Would've been cool to have an actual inverted Ganon castle, a fortress on the Blood Moon or perhaps Link traveling back in time to fight Ganondorf alongside Rauru when he was still 'beatable'. Would've been sort of a fun time loop if it turns out the 'hero' from the tapestry is actually Link himself who made his way back through time.
The final battles of the game also surprisingly do nothing with the building and sages mechanics, relying almost entirely on parry. First stages of the boss battle almost seem like a cut sequence from BOTW. The twin dragon part at the very end (although heavily scripted) is awesome. However, Zelda returning back to normal after the battle seems like a missed opportunity for a second quest to find a way to restore her body.
If I had to decide between a big final dungeon and second quest or the Depths I would pick the former.
Depths were definitely a missed opportunity. Just big empty spaces.
I wanted actual underground cave systems and interlinked dungeons.
They went halfway and stopped.
(04-18-2024, 11:18 PM)Potato wrote: Depths were definitely a missed opportunity. Just big empty spaces.
I wanted actual underground cave systems and interlinked dungeons.
They went halfway and stopped.
I think they just ran into technical limitations.
As far as I understand the plan was to do more DLC for BOTW (hence using the same world and the early the announcement trailer) and that turned into a full fledged sequel instead that they kept adding things to as they kept working on it. They cut a bunch of Sky Islands because the sky got too busy.
What I find odd is that it has the depths but also the caves and some of the caves are nearly dungeon level.
The game doesn't explain it very well but in hindsight there's an obvious linear order to tackle things.
Quest 1
- 4 main sages (Wind, Fire, Water, Desert) / Land + Sky
Spoiler: (click to show)(click to hide) - Stable rumors / Land
- Maps towers / Land
Spoiler: (click to show)(click to hide) - Geoglyphs / Land + Sky
- Restoring the mother statue / Land + Sky Spoiler: (click to show)(click to hide) - Finding the Master Sword (Korok Forest) / Land + Sky + Depths (first time depths are necessary to progress apart from the Goron temple)
- Hyrule Castle / Land Spoiler: (click to show)(click to hide) - 5th sage (Spirit) / Land + Sky + Depths (depths take a more prominent role) Spoiler: (click to show)(click to hide) - Finding Ganon (Yiga Clan quest) / Land + Depths
- Final battle
If you play the game in this order than the final battle is basically the ending of a long quest through the depths.
I did read that if you don't unlock the Sages, you actually have to fight all the bosses again.
Problem with that system is that they introduced the depths pretty early and of course everyone immediately went down there to look around. Then they discovered it was a big empty nothing and got disappointed.
Great game, but had its flaws.
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It's very strangely balanced.
They put the most basic baby vehicle tutorials and blueprints in the hardest area of the game and it makes no sense that they are hidden there in the first place.
If I had to take a guess, I suppose you were to collect the Schema Stones in the sky in an earlier version of the game when it had more sky islands, as that is where all the Zonai stuff is.
Anyway, I started Chrono Cross. So far I dig it, fun battle system, great music.
Remaster on Switch runs decent now. Apparently they patched it significantly post release.
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Not entirely sure what is wrong with me, but I went back to Watch_Dogs: Legion, which I rage-quit 2 years ago after the final mission gave me no way to re-spec out of my non-lethal stealth loadout in a final mission which was unabashedly guns blazing. Tried finishing the last boss 20 times or so, couldn't manage it.
After struggling through Immortals: Rise of Fenyx and making sure I finished it, I realized I liked that game less than Legion, so determined to re-play and complete Legion to settle my ongoing compulsive issues.
It is a good game on its own. Following WD2, which I love-love-love, it is a harsh and frustrating pill to swallow, but on its own it is a satisfying experience. The biggest problem I am noticing this time around is the lack of a central character. If the game was just gameplay, I'd be OK with that, but the story is heaped on through the villains, making everything feel purely reactive. Even when the player's DedSec group goes after any of the three antagonists' group, it is a reactive stance, not something they're working to put in place. WD2 may have that as well, but it's also about Marcus relationship with other strong characters. Legion leaves aside all of the character interactions for generic, poorly voiced, AI-modulated lines which have been called out in essentially every review of it.
In contrast, the gameplay is actually pretty fun. Because they are legion, the various NPCs-turned-PCs in the game have unique abilities, the most powerful of which is uniformed camoflage. Being able to avoid triggering the alarm --just by being in the right outfit and acting "normal" (no running, crouching, climbing) and maintaining a little distance-- increases tension and deepens the experience. People say you can penetrate many defenses just by holding a clipboard and marching forward like you're meant to be there. This feels like that.
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Finally cleared the "final" mission yesterday - turns out it's the first of three separate "point of no return" missions, one for Albion, two for Zero Day, the larger antagonist. THREE final missions. Played through to the final credits last night.
I was so nervous, and I have a bad cold right now, so I played for shit and lost two characters as I attempted the mission that I ragequit before.
Regrouping, I realized how to approach the first bit, and then the part that had actually giving me trouble 2 years ago I cleared on the first try.
1 user liked this post: Nintex
Continuing the trend, I bought the BLOODLINES dlc for it, and am playing as Aiden from WD1, and Wrench from WD2 is either the foil, or playable. I suspect it's a two-character story right now. I played WDL on Easy to just fucking finish it, but this I've restored to normal, and it's reminding me how much I liked the first one until I couldn't clear a mission or back out of it.
Bloodlines is an actual story with playable characters rather than Legions focus on making every NPC playable. It's solid. They should have gone this route for WDL.
Playing Chrono Cross. What a strange game.
There is characters to recruit all over the place and some are very easy to miss, the story is quite dark for a vanilla Square Enix RPG, especially compared to Chrono Trigger.
Spoiler: (click to show)(click to hide) In the path I picked you kill a Hydra to find a cure to save a party member but that poisons the swamp and makes the Dwarfs angry, the dwarfs then invade the Fairy Island to murder all of them because apparently that's allowed now. The Fairies that survive blame you for the deaths of their friends.
The Remaster is rough though, framerate is ok, nothing to write home about. Upscaled backgrounds are fine I guess, they look very soft losing quite a bit of detail. FMV's are very grainy they clearly didn't have any source material to upscale.
Chrono Cross is certainly a mindfuck but I still dig it about 15 hours in.
Feels almost like a Xenoblade game without Xeno in the title. 
About 25 hours into Chrono Cross now. One dragon left to slay before the end game I suppose?
Some great stuff in this game but outside of the battles it's basically a SNES game mechanically.
Side quests and recruitable characters are often well hidden and while you find all these key items, you have no clue what they are for and the game only gives you very vague hints on what to do next. Often there is a single NPC that says something that sort of sends you in the right direction but he can be literally anywhere or you have to use an item but stand in a very specific spot to trigger an event.
The fantastic music certainly helps with all the backtracking.
30+ hours now.
I stumbled on the most powerful sword in the game and I believe there is no other logical way to get this and it required doing a whole bunch of random things with very few hints.
Spoiler: (click to show)(click to hide)
0. Pillaged the Black Dragons Black Plate what's that?
1. Forgot I already had the Smith Spirit and went to the Blacksmith only to hear them talk about their missing song Karsh
2. Put Karsh in my party and return there. Get a cutscene about how and why Karsh left
3. I returned to Viper Manor to find Norris to get his Level 7 tech, Norris is basically my main 2nd party member and I vaguely remember Norris from the Other World telling my Norris to come find him (which wouldn't have happened if they didn't have Norris in my party).
4. Walked around Viper Manor and noticed a new(?) treasure room. Opened the treasure box to find a letter to Kash telling him to come to The Island of the Damned
5. Go to the island with Kash, fight with Solt and Peppor (who accuse him of killing Dario), they give you a pendant without explanation
6. Go to the Forbidden Island for some reason (which was locked the entire game) to find Dario(?) sitting there.
7. Show Dario (who has A M N E S I A the pendant, nothing happens
8. Remember the cutscene with Karsh, Riddel and Dario. Put Riddel in my party
9. Dario remembers turns on us being possesed with the Masasune devil sword
11. Dario kicks our asses with magic attacks that wipe us out in 1 hit
12. Can't leave the island
13. Do run away -> heal -> run away -> heal but nothing seems to work
14. Look through the item list, see the "Black Plate"
15. Every Black Innate attack now heals instead of doing damage
16. Dario defeated, he opens an orphanage, I get the strongest weapon in the game
Look up a guide on the internet about the Black Plate, find out it's a 0.1% pillage chance item that is held only by the black dragon
Anyway the Story is really Xenoblade now or maybe Xenoblade is just Chrono Cross 2?
Spoiler: (click to show)(click to hide) Turns out everything is a struggle between ancient dragons and a computer sealing their power to prevent the world from progressing to its doomed(?) future. Lavos was the meteor that killed the dinosaurs and he 'transformed' primitive apes into humans. Lynx / Dark Serge was actually the physical form of this computer called FATE manipulating events and trying to prevent any sort of 'glitch' in the carefully managed system.
In other words, peak fiction.
Finished up Chrono Cross. A solid 8/10 even with the technical issues of the Radical Dreamers remaster.
Overall a great and very unique game but a bit too ambitious like other games from this era. They couldn't seem to pull off all the concepts and ideas on a technical level. Switching worlds, swapping out party members and allocating elements is all a bit cumbersome or very limited. It didn't really need 50+ characters to recruit, considering you can only have a party of 3.
Removing any grinding by progressing at key events makes it faster to play through but also a bit easy once you get lucky with element drops or just spend spend spend and you're never short on money. The strange thing is that while the combat is easy, finding out where you need to go next isn't. You often have to revisit the entire map again. In some instances you need to trigger events in the correct order, so even if you know what to do, you still have to figure out how to do it.
Because the story is so convoluted it takes a long time for the main plot to get going and it ends rather abruptly with a dissapointing final boss.
The "Bad Ending" is hardly an ending at all. The "Good Ending" is very ambigious. It feels like they just ran out of time and money to polish it.
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