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Evilreaver
Feb 26, 2007

GEORGE IS GETTIN' AUGMENTED!
Dinosaur Gum

Zanzibar Ham posted:

Wow why do you hate Tetris so much?

The story of Tetris is that of the human condition: good work disappears and mistakes pile up until you die

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Somfin
Oct 25, 2010

In my🦚 experience🛠️ the big things🌑 don't teach you anything🤷‍♀️.

Nap Ghost

Evilreaver posted:

The story of Tetris is that of the human condition: good work disappears and mistakes pile up until you die

And the only thing that matters is making sure everyone is jealous of your rear end

Samuringa
Mar 27, 2017

Best advice I was ever given?

"Ticker, you'll be a lot happier once you stop caring about the opinions of a culture that is beneath you."

I learned my worth, learned the places and people that matter.

Opened my eyes.

I like the encounters in Berseria at least because I use the item that draws more monster, pile 3 or 4 together and just have a massive chaotic battle, clawing everything.

It also gives a lot more good spoils and equipment experience.

RareAcumen
Dec 28, 2012




Dilb posted:

Something that's bugged me in a bunch of JRPGs recently - making random encounters way too easy and basically pointless. In Tales of Berseria, random encounters are brain-dead-easy unless you up the difficulty to "mega-impossible" or whatever, which itself only unlocks after playing the game for a while, and even then I don't think they were that bad. Ni no kuni 2 was super easy as well. But then both had boss battles that were actually a decent challenge, as well as optional fights. Berseria had the added bonus that the optional boss fights were randomly added to normal encounters, so it's not like you can just slide the difficulty before and after each boss.

Easy random encounters might not be a problem if they still served to grind you down through a dungeon, but a lot of modern games let you carry as much healing as you like. Having to use 1-3 dirt cheap healing items to recover after a fight isn't much of a setback when you can buy and carry 99 at a time.

Good random enemy difficulty such as?

Samuringa posted:

I like the encounters in Berseria at least because I use the item that draws more monster, pile 3 or 4 together and just have a massive chaotic battle, clawing everything.

It also gives a lot more good spoils and equipment experience.

Y'know, speaking of Berseria I've got a lot of issues.

The costumes suck in this game- And I mean specifically, the ones that you get from sidequests and such but I still don't like Velvet or Magilou's default ones- and it seems to have copied Nioh's idea of inventory because you're constantly getting more and more of the same weapon that they want you to break down into materials to upgrade other things. Also it seems that any time you get hit you also get stunned so if there're any enemies in the battle that do quick attacks like the bat soundwave attacks then you'll just get comboed to death as everything else gangs up on you.

Vic
Nov 26, 2009

malae fidei cum XI_XXVI_MMIX
I finished Dark Souls out of spite, and it felt like a big gotcha because the setting and people talking about it made it into something big and insurmountable over the years.

I wouldn't finish it if it weren't for my friend who went in completely blind and Forrest Gumped the game in a few days. I later checked and his character was also completely unoptimized for the weapons he was wielding.

His advice was "gotta be careful and keep hitting them when they miss"

I love that guy

BiggerBoat
Sep 26, 2007

Don't you tell me my business again.

Vic posted:

I finished Dark Souls out of spite,

PYF Little Things Dragging This Game Down, And Also Pokemon>I finished Dark Souls out of spite

Somfin
Oct 25, 2010

In my🦚 experience🛠️ the big things🌑 don't teach you anything🤷‍♀️.

Nap Ghost

Vic posted:

I finished Dark Souls out of spite, and it felt like a big gotcha because the setting and people talking about it made it into something big and insurmountable over the years.

I wouldn't finish it if it weren't for my friend who went in completely blind and Forrest Gumped the game in a few days. I later checked and his character was also completely unoptimized for the weapons he was wielding.

His advice was "gotta be careful and keep hitting them when they miss"

I love that guy

Ever since I found out that you can beat the game naked and unarmed, I've felt way better about my build decisions. Optimisation is for multiplayer and multiplayer only.

1stGear
Jan 16, 2010

Here's to the new us.

Vic posted:

His advice was "gotta be careful and keep hitting them when they miss"

Miyazaki raises his face to the sky, tears of joy streaming down his face.

"Finally. Someone understands Dark Souls."

Attestant
Oct 23, 2012

Don't judge me.
The worst thing to happen to Dark Souls was difficulty being used as the primary marketing angle. That turned off a lot of people from trying the games, and helped foster the dumb elitist parts of the community.

RareAcumen
Dec 28, 2012




Attestant posted:

The worst thing to happen to Dark Souls was difficulty being used as the primary marketing angle. That turned off a lot of people from trying the games, and helped foster the dumb elitist parts of the community.

Actually I think you mean the coffin that changes your gender was the worst thing to happen to Dark Souls with the second being Adaptability.

LeastActionHero
Oct 23, 2008

RareAcumen posted:

Good random enemy difficulty such as?

A game I played recently - Dragon Quest I. If enemies are too easy, you can and should go fight tougher, more rewarding enemies. Some enemies you want to fight immediately, some are tougher and you want to run away from them, at least as first. The most important part is that you aren't stuck fighting a dozen trivial encounters because they are literally blocking the path right in front of you. In Ni No Kuni II I think I could have put the controller down and the AI would have won most of the random encounters for me, but they're literally on the path forward and you can't avoid them.

DQI also has sharply limited healing, because you have a small number of herbs, and a limited amount of magic, and that's basically it. Run out and you need to get back to town. Enemies that are easy to kill might still be interesting to encounter depending on how much damage they can do to you before you're likely to win.

As a more recent example, I remember Lost Odyssey having a lot of random encounters that were reasonably challenging.

Attestant
Oct 23, 2012

Don't judge me.

RareAcumen posted:

Actually I think you mean the coffin that changes your gender was the worst thing to happen to Dark Souls with the second being Adaptability.

That coffin was excellent. It was extremely important to make a nice looking character of one gender, then change it ASAP to see what kind of abomination the same sliders do when swapped. :colbert:

ilmucche
Mar 16, 2016

Dilb posted:


As a more recent example, I remember Lost Odyssey having a lot of random encounters that were reasonably challenging.

Lost odyssey did it so the first few encounters in an area would give you loads of xp to get you to a desired level. Ifnyou tried to grind fights would eventually give you like nothing

Owl Inspector
Sep 14, 2011

Deified Data posted:

You can always pretend it doesn't exist like any other game and just throw the XP away I guess. The system is a lot more forgiving than most games.

It really isn't. Normally losing in a game means you get kicked back to a save point and keep whatever exp/money you had at the point when you saved. losing in dark souls means you get kicked back to a save point, lose your human/embered form, and losing again before getting to your bloodstain means you also lose all of your exp/money.

People downplay dying in those games since enjoying them means you really have to get in the mindset where you're okay with losing some stuff from time to time, but they absolutely aren't forgiving

Deified Data
Nov 3, 2015


Fun Shoe

Digirat posted:

It really isn't. Normally losing in a game means you get kicked back to a save point and keep whatever exp/money you had at the point when you saved. losing in dark souls means you get kicked back to a save point, lose your human/embered form, and losing again before getting to your bloodstain means you also lose all of your exp/money.

People downplay dying in those games since enjoying them means you really have to get in the mindset where you're okay with losing some stuff from time to time, but they absolutely aren't forgiving

I don't know I guess it comes with habit - I don't lose poo poo in Souls games because I just bank my progress in levels or items if I feel I might lose them soon. And you're right part of being cool with that is accepting that ultimately whatever you lost was meaningless and easily replaced, but I don't think that's tough for even newish players to wrap their head around.

On the flip side of what you mentioned, the system also allows you to make corpse runs at valuable items and keep it if you died, potentially making your next run easier or even trivial - you're always making progress, whereas in a normal game you might feel like you're running into a brick wall.

Queen Combat
Dec 29, 2017

Lipstick Apathy
Man, resetting enemies in souls games doesn't make me feel like progress is being made.

Cleretic
Feb 3, 2010


Ignore my posts!
I'm aggressively wrong about everything!

Queen Combat posted:

Man, resetting enemies in souls games doesn't make me feel like progress is being made.

Dark Souls 2 (also known as The Secret Best Dark Souls) added extinction mechanics, where if you killed a particular enemy spawn a certain amount of times, they'd stop coming back. It was actually a fantastic mechanic, because it removed that painful 'run to your souls/the boss through all the trash mobs you've already beaten' that's no fun at all. But it also meant that people couldn't grind for drops or souls, so hardcore Souls people hated it, and it didn't make the jump to 3 probably for that reason.

Attestant
Oct 23, 2012

Don't judge me.
Dark Souls 2 had so many great gameplay additions and changes. It's such a goddamn shame they fumbled the world and the visuals, and made the community hate the game for it.

Mokinokaro
Sep 11, 2001

At the end of everything, hold onto anything



Fun Shoe

ilmucche posted:

Lost odyssey did it so the first few encounters in an area would give you loads of xp to get you to a desired level. Ifnyou tried to grind fights would eventually give you like nothing

The great part of this was that it made the bosses really fun. There were usually stilll ways to cheese the boss fights but you had to think.

exquisite tea
Apr 21, 2007

Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."


While Death's Gambit was a mediocre Souls clone at best, I really liked their implementation of respawning on death. You didn't lose souls, and if you progressed further on a boss attempt than you ever did before, you got a few extra shards to level up with. Instead of getting discouraged after an hour of boss fights with nothing to show for it, you could see yourself making progress and were actively encouraged to get over the hump by getting better in increments. At the same time there were very few enemies before a boss to grind on and runbacks were relatively short, so you just wanted to jump back in and try again. I thought that one particular element was far superior to the binary way other Souls games handle death.

Inspector Gesicht
Oct 26, 2012

500 Zeus a body.


One idea that's never been implemented is if you die to a boss again and again then they Hoover up all your souls each time. When you finally kill the boss they drop all the souls they took from you on top of what they normally drop. It would add an element of revenge and vindication to the whole process.

Len
Jan 21, 2008

Pouches, bandages, shoulderpad, cyber-eye...

Bitchin'!


Demons Souls gave the last boss a fun new ability on a ng+

He could level you down.

I was able to take to of those hits before I died and just lost two levels. That was fun.

Deified Data
Nov 3, 2015


Fun Shoe
Is there a thread that's like "I'm currently playing this 10 year old game and there's no megathread for it so I will post my random ramblings about it here", that is if you have nothing particularly negative to say about it?

Owl Inspector
Sep 14, 2011

Deified Data posted:

On the flip side of what you mentioned, the system also allows you to make corpse runs at valuable items and keep it if you died, potentially making your next run easier or even trivial - you're always making progress, whereas in a normal game you might feel like you're running into a brick wall.

This is a good point I didn’t really think about, and I guess also a reason souls bosses are a Thing Dragging the Games Down for me. On my first playthrough of dark souls 1, which was my first game, I’d lose pretty regularly but always felt like I was making progress and nothing felt unreasonable, until the moment I hit a boss when all progress just slammed to a halt because not only are they disproportionate spikes in the difficulty curve but they also mean you’re getting nothing done until you finally get past them. I never feel like I’m at a brick wall in souls games, until I hit a boss.

Bloodborne works roughly the same way and I’ve read more than a few people pick up the game, really struggle with yharnam but still enjoy playing because they’re able to have little victories like getting another item or opening a shortcut, and then reach father gascoigne, get completely stonewalled, and hang up the game forever because there’s nothing they can do anymore but throw themselves at the fight until they win. x2 for bloodborne because a thing dragging that game down is having to grind for blood vials/bullets if anything gives you trouble early in the game, so not only are you stuck but you can’t even try to win as often as you should.

BioEnchanted
Aug 9, 2011

He plays for the dreamers that forgot how to dream, and the lovers that forgot how to love.

Deified Data posted:

Is there a thread that's like "I'm currently playing this 10 year old game and there's no megathread for it so I will post my random ramblings about it here", that is if you have nothing particularly negative to say about it?

I tend to just use these threads depending on whether the ramblings are positive or negative.

Leave
Feb 7, 2012

Taking the term "Koopaling" to a whole new level since 2016.
There's no way to pet the kitty in Evil Within 2.

Owl Inspector
Sep 14, 2011

Inspector Gesicht posted:

One idea that's never been implemented is if you die to a boss again and again then they Hoover up all your souls each time. When you finally kill the boss they drop all the souls they took from you on top of what they normally drop. It would add an element of revenge and vindication to the whole process.

In salt and sanctuary, whatever killed you takes all your salt and you have to kill it to get it back. But bosses get a notch in their health bar at 80% instead which makes them drop the salt, so unless you faceplant and die before you do just a small amount of damage you can get it back from them.

StealthArcher
Jan 10, 2010




Deified Data posted:

Is there a thread that's like "I'm currently playing this 10 year old game and there's no megathread for it so I will post my random ramblings about it here", that is if you have nothing particularly negative to say about it?

What should i know before i play this? In Games.

Also has a site https://beforeiplay.com

Zanzibar Ham
Mar 17, 2009

You giving me the cold shoulder? How cruel.


Grimey Drawer
Not really, unless you think people really need to know your opinions on the relationship between Dante and Virgil before they play a DMC.

Len
Jan 21, 2008

Pouches, bandages, shoulderpad, cyber-eye...

Bitchin'!


Deified Data posted:

Is there a thread that's like "I'm currently playing this 10 year old game and there's no megathread for it so I will post my random ramblings about it here", that is if you have nothing particularly negative to say about it?

There's a thread called "some bioenchanted evening" about playing old games in pyf

The Moon Monster
Dec 30, 2005

RareAcumen posted:

Good random enemy difficulty such as?


Y'know, speaking of Berseria I've got a lot of issues.

The costumes suck in this game- And I mean specifically, the ones that you get from sidequests and such but I still don't like Velvet or Magilou's default ones- and it seems to have copied Nioh's idea of inventory because you're constantly getting more and more of the same weapon that they want you to break down into materials to upgrade other things. Also it seems that any time you get hit you also get stunned so if there're any enemies in the battle that do quick attacks like the bat soundwave attacks then you'll just get comboed to death as everything else gangs up on you.

Tales costumes have sucked for awhile now that they rope all the interesting ones off as payed content.

BioEnchanted
Aug 9, 2011

He plays for the dreamers that forgot how to dream, and the lovers that forgot how to love.
When I first got my Wii U I got Xenoblade Chronicles X, and loved it's sidequests, but the main gameplay was grindy and repetitive and the main story was dull. X mainly annoyed me because I loved the alien characters and seeing their stories unfold, as you introduce the Ma Non to earth culture, intergalactic space nerds who focus so hard on engineering that as a species they never bothered coming up with cuisine or fashion. They just throw on whatever's in the cupboard, even if it's ill-fitting, get something to keep them going and bam, start building cool engines and poo poo.

Then they meet Humans and other aliens, and get really into earth food, with Pizza becoming so popular among them that they are pretty much 70% of the pizzeria's clientelle, to their chagrin because the Ma Non are obsessive engineers and so have many complaints if the olives aren't evenly distributed or if the pizza is slightly the wrong size by a 1/4 inch.

They end up unintentionally driving the pizza guys wife into a nervous breakdown. That's an amazing story, it's just a shame the main plot couldn't be that good.
An amusing thing is also that they do feel emotions like normal, but parse them differently - would getting pissed off at this other idiot Ma Non who did something that annoyed you help you build an engine? Then gently caress it, let it go, you may need his help later. As a result they have trouble understanding that humans can't compartmentalise that well.
They're my favourite alien race in anything.

If you don't do the sidequests, you don't get any of that, and you also miss out on 5 or 6 other races entirely. And a lot of those sidequests are overly difficult and frustrating given the tools you are granted.

Riatsala
Nov 20, 2013

All Princesses are Tyrants

BioEnchanted posted:

I tend to just use these threads depending on whether the ramblings are positive or negative.

And our forums experience is all the better for it :)


BioEnchanted posted:

When I first got my Wii U I got Xenoblade Chronicles X, and loved it's sidequests, but the main gameplay was grindy and repetitive and the main story was dull. X mainly annoyed me because I loved the alien characters and seeing their stories unfold, as you introduce the Ma Non to earth culture, intergalactic space nerds who focus so hard on engineering that as a species they never bothered coming up with cuisine or fashion. They just throw on whatever's in the cupboard, even if it's ill-fitting, get something to keep them going and bam, start building cool engines and poo poo.

Then they meet Humans and other aliens, and get really into earth food, with Pizza becoming so popular among them that they are pretty much 70% of the pizzeria's clientelle, to their chagrin because the Ma Non are obsessive engineers and so have many complaints if the olives aren't evenly distributed or if the pizza is slightly the wrong size by a 1/4 inch.

They end up unintentionally driving the pizza guys wife into a nervous breakdown. That's an amazing story, it's just a shame the main plot couldn't be that good.
An amusing thing is also that they do feel emotions like normal, but parse them differently - would getting pissed off at this other idiot Ma Non who did something that annoyed you help you build an engine? Then gently caress it, let it go, you may need his help later. As a result they have trouble understanding that humans can't compartmentalise that well.
They're my favourite alien race in anything.

If you don't do the sidequests, you don't get any of that, and you also miss out on 5 or 6 other races entirely. And a lot of those sidequests are overly difficult and frustrating given the tools you are granted.

This is actually a complaint I have about a lot of JRPGs, they put all the creative energy and characterization into the sidequests that you never see but when it comes time to write the main quest they either write the most generic plot possible or drop acid and go completely off the rails and either way it's stunningly boring.

PubicMice
Feb 14, 2012

looking for information on posts
Re: random encounters, all games need to be Etrian Odyssey.

Anyway, I played the demo for Persona 3: Dancing in Moonlight, and it's pretty disappointing. The worst thing, though, is that the characters talk constantly throughout the songs, which is exactly what you want most when you're trying to focus on hearing a rhythm.

Len
Jan 21, 2008

Pouches, bandages, shoulderpad, cyber-eye...

Bitchin'!


PubicMice posted:

Re: random encounters, all games need to be Etrian Odyssey.

Anyway, I played the demo for Persona 3: Dancing in Moonlight, and it's pretty disappointing. The worst thing, though, is that the characters talk constantly throughout the songs, which is exactly what you want most when you're trying to focus on hearing a rhythm.

I slam pre-ordered the ultra combo edition with all three games. Then I played the demo and immediately cancelled. It might end up being a blast but I'll pick them up on sale because that did not seem like $100 worth of gameplay

FactsAreUseless
Feb 16, 2011

Somfin posted:

Ever since I found out that you can beat the game naked and unarmed, I've felt way better about my build decisions. Optimisation is for multiplayer and multiplayer only.
You will not have a good time playing bare-handed.

FactsAreUseless
Feb 16, 2011

Attestant posted:

Dark Souls 2 had so many great gameplay additions and changes. It's such a goddamn shame they fumbled the world and the visuals, and made the community hate the game for it.
They fumbled basic game mechanics, but honestly given the production issues it's amazing that DS2 came out at all.

Somfin
Oct 25, 2010

In my🦚 experience🛠️ the big things🌑 don't teach you anything🤷‍♀️.

Nap Ghost

FactsAreUseless posted:

You will not have a good time playing bare-handed.

No, but you don't need to have a perfect build as long as you're still making numbers you like go up.

RareAcumen
Dec 28, 2012




The Moon Monster posted:

Tales costumes have sucked for awhile now that they rope all the interesting ones off as payed content.

I'll take your word for it. I've only played Symphonia and Vesperia so I might just have a skewed idea of them.

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The Moon Monster
Dec 30, 2005

RareAcumen posted:

I'll take your word for it. I've only played Symphonia and Vesperia so I might just have a skewed idea of them.

I want to say Vesperia was the last one where that wasn't the case, and that was back in what 2008?

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