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Kchama posted:It basically completely wastes some of the actually really good songs the game has by throwing them into situations where they ever have no impact or just plain don't fit. I think the only time a song has fit the boss fight has been the Golden Alpaca boss fight theme, and I'm convinced that was entirely by accident. It feels like some of the music decisions were made by spinner wheel. If somebody told me the music triggers were improperly coded or flagged or whatever it would make a lot more sense than "somebody put this music in here and decided it was fine".
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Mar 9, 2019 20:30
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Alien Rope Burn posted:It feels like some of the music decisions were made by spinner wheel. If somebody told me the music triggers were improperly coded or flagged or whatever it would make a lot more sense than "somebody put this music in here and decided it was fine". It's funny because you COULD do this and make it work out, but YIIK sure as hell didn't. Like, Endless Frontier had it so it'd play one of the themes of the PCs you had in the party (and all the PCs had multiple themes that were all very good songs for combat) at random, unless an enemy theme was present to overwrite it. But that would clearly be too much work for Ackk Studios.
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Mar 9, 2019 20:44
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diacorn posted:My guess is that they're going for a strategy where everything is explained at the end in such a way that it completely redeems Alex, not unlike Night in the Woods, another way better game that ModeWondershot and I have name-dropped on camera. That's at least an explainable character-writing strategy. I happened to dislike Night in the Woods because while the main character is made more sympathetic by a reveal late in the third act, none of what's talked about excuses of the lovely things the protagonist did in the game up to that point. I don't expect Alex has ever had a psychotic break, though, and thus doesn't really have a leg to stand on; he just appears to be irredeemably awful. I don't think this is a fair reading of Night in the Woods. Mae is a disaster of immaturity and misfortune but also has a broadly sympathetic core. Her condition was compounded by completely incompetent treatment (itself arguably primarily a consequence of the malaise that grips Possum Springs) and continues to negatively impact her development - such that she can't actually begin maturing the way she might've - all the way up until it causes her to drop out of college. The result is the character we get in the game; consistently well meaning, but playing from such a disadvantage that she can't even see the strains she's putting on her relationships with her friends. The most important difference between Mae and Alex (as far as we've seen in YIIK anyway) is that NitW spends reams and reams of dialogue selling us on the notion that Mae is trying, really trying, to be good, even though she's loving it up incredibly and the first steps of her recovery are just realizing how much trouble she's caused. I don't think it's right to frame anything in the latter third of the game to be "excusing" anything Mae's done up until that point, but it does cause her to have to confront those things, and to have it out with Bea or Gregg (depending on choices), who are the wronged parties, whose choice it is to forgive her or not. Mae works as a sympathetic character because for the first half of the game we get to see her intentions (though never through literal inner monologues) and how they go awry, and for the second half of the game she's being dragged through events beyond her control. Alex does not work because despite a barrage of exposition we never really see him reflect on any of the myriad things he does that cause people to not like him, and also because he's pursuing the plot largely of his own accord, to get a girl.
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Mar 10, 2019 03:25
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Fedule posted:I don't think this is a fair reading of Night in the Woods. This all sums up things real well, I think. Thank you for putting it better than I could have.
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Mar 10, 2019 08:00
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Mar 13, 2019 01:33
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that loving episode pun title 
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Mar 13, 2019 03:26
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Ackk you cannot be serious what the gently caress is this lazy bullshit?
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Mar 13, 2019 03:45
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Okay, some Actual Metaphysics! The relentless advance of medical science has allowed us to become ever more intimately acquainted with what goes on inside our brains. We have a reasonably good idea where in the brain you'll find facts, memories, emotions, skills, judgement, and whatever else. We're pretty sure it's all in there. We know how the brain links to all the other parts of the body, and where signals from those parts all go, and how they're processed, and how physical phenomena are translated into experience, and sometimes back. Wow! What nobody can account for, however, is how your continuous experience is tethered to your brain, and not, say, mine. We can explain what our bodies are, and we can prove to a certainty that we exist, but we remain unable to account for what exactly we are. What is the link, and what exactly is on the other end of it to the brain? Lots of people are very curious about this. Depending on who you ask this is called either the Hard Problem of Consciousness or the Mind-Body Problem or maybe even Existential Despair. It's a fucker. No applicable definition of biology or psychology can cover this link. The problem is fascinating to contemplate but it's impossible to imagine any particular answer that would actually have an impact on any other area of life. Therefore it's metaphysics. That or theology; you might as well call this the soul. Rory almost manages to articulate this idea. What he ends up saying is nonsense in both semantics and syntax. What he's getting at is that the soul might not be linked to the brain but somewhere else in the body. He stumbles around imagining a person having a brain transplant but not a soul transplant, presumably leaving a consciousness linked to a new brain (with, presumably, new memories, emotions, skills, etc). Cool! Definitely metaphysics. I wonder if the game will remember to revisit this idea in any depth. A game that actually made some hay with this idea is The Swapper, a puzzle game set on a ship named Theseus (which, boldly, has a Metaphysics Deck) and featuring characters named Dennett and Chalmers who argue over the nature of consciousness, on which the meaning of the story hinges ("Why, if all we are is nuts and bolts we may as well consider the computer alive! Your account is missing the magic, and when the cards are down mine is simply easier to believe." "People don't like to learn that the soul is merely an array of chemical signals. I say that if you explain a magic trick by reference to magic you've not explained a drat thing."). That's how you leverage this useless philosophy in fiction! I can't wait to find out how much value YIIK doesn't mine from the same concepts.
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Mar 13, 2019 04:18
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So far the only really positive thing I can say about this game is that the soundtrack for the poor town is really nice. Then I realised it's just ripping off this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eUbU1cmMDc
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Mar 13, 2019 04:32
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Vella to the Alcoholic: And stay dead! I wasn't aware he was dead in the first place. Also did Rory go to the sewer cap, make them walk across town twice for no real reason, and then walk back to the sewer cap?
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Mar 13, 2019 04:55
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Fedule posted:Okay, some Actual Metaphysics! Thank you for doing this, so I don't have to (and I wouldn't do it as competently given that I haven't been in a philosophy class for thirteen years). Honestly, I'd almost prefer that the game not try harder to explore the implications of its own themes, given the risk that they would be expressed nigh-exclusively as monologues. SirSamVimes posted:Then I realised it's just ripping off this I think we have also explored the fact that the good mechanics or aesthetics of the game tend to be ripped from other sources. The opening and introduction being very much Earthbound, certain combat actions being from Paper Mario or Shadow Hearts, the sitcom house. Hell, the impetus of our plot being the result of a real life tragedy wasn't a good idea, but it is still there. If it weren't for those rip-offs, the game would be about 8% of a good idea. Cyouni posted:Also did Rory go to the sewer cap, make them walk across town twice for no real reason, and then walk back to the sewer cap? Again, I think this scene almost makes sense if the payoff is that the whole walk and everything turned out to be a prelude to Rory having a nervous breakdown over the disappearance of a family member. The idea that he crafts this narrative of conspiracies and happenstance that explains the unexplained before confronting the reality of the apparent meaninglessness of what has happened to his sister could honestly be kind of compelling. In a different narrative, of course, with a different writer.
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Mar 14, 2019 03:28
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Fedule posted:Okay, some Actual Metaphysics! I won't say that metaphysics is entirely useless, because there's a key part of it that's become more and more prominent in recent years: the concept of "continuity of consciousness." Basically speaking, in that scenario where you do a brain transplant, how is it possible to ensure that the recipient is still the same person as they were before it happened? Since that link between consciousness and the brain is impossible to detect and can only be articulated by a person themselves (read: I am conscious right now), does that mean that even though you've biologically saved that person's life they're effectively dead anyway? Has their "soul" or whatever we'll call it in the future vanished or has it still somehow held on? Even if they act like they're the same person as before and may even have their memories, how do you know you're talking to the same being from before? It's a big deal because - for one - it'1s becoming more and more possible that we might be able to digitize a person's brain and preserve their personality, but not necessarily their consciousness. This is where cyberpunk has stepped in quite a bit, asking "If you can copy a person, then what is the value of the copy compared to the original, and vice versa?" Alternatively if humanity ends up going down a route of biological or mechanical augmentation (an equally heavily studied field), how do we know whether we've replaced the one part of the human body that tethers consciousness to it? That concept is a foundation for a lot of great and interesting stories that take it in a variety of different directions, whether as a key story element or a question naturally brought up as part of the narrative (see stuff like the aforementioned The Swapper, Ghost in the Shell (the original anime movie), NieR Automata (to an extent), SOMA (probably the game that touches on the subject most heavily), Xenoblade 2 (it's actually surprising how important it becomes there)). Even if it's not a key focus, it can still be an interesting question to ask in a story if only to drum up some interesting philosophizing and characterization. YiiK is probably definitely not going to be one of them.
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Mar 14, 2019 04:49
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in order for this game to offer any sort of metaphysical analysis, wouldn’t it need a point of view character at least a little less passionately committed to burying his head up his own rear end, forever dude’s demonstrated on more than one occasion that his world stops at the tip of his nose, and nothing about the game so far indicates a desire to address this in any way other than “self-deprecating” “jokes” the punchline of which wore out its welcome a long-rear end time ago And while I'm thinking of it: whoever wrote this/proofread this doesn't appear to have the finest grasp on the differences between the words "conscious" , "conscience", and "consciousness". Rory's VA says it the first way; the text in the box interprets it the second way; but the word both Rory and the writer of this game actually wanted to use there is the lattermost one. SatansOnion fucked around with this message at 06:33 on Mar 14, 2019 |
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Mar 14, 2019 05:45
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Mar 16, 2019 01:11
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The +2 exp goes to whoever lands the 'final blow' or whatever. Also I should warn you because I don't know if Ackk Studios patched it yet, but the game will softlock if you use Vella's Feedback skill more than two times. It happened to me during the final boss and I had to replay pretty much the entire final chapter, because that was where my last save was.
Combat Lobster fucked around with this message at 02:54 on Mar 16, 2019 |
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Mar 16, 2019 02:29
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Combat Lobster posted:The +2 exp goes to whoever lands the 'final blow' or whatever. Also I should warn you because I don't know if Ackk Studios patched it yet, but the game will softlock if you use Vella's Feedback skill more than two times. It happened to me during the final boss and I had to replay pretty much the entire final chapter, because that was where my last save was. Wait, what? Why does it softlock you? Kchama fucked around with this message at 03:10 on Mar 16, 2019 |
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Mar 16, 2019 02:58
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Thanks for the tip, Combat Lobster. Guess the game can't escape a few game-breaking bugs as opposed to simply amusing ones. Incidentally, while the cliche of the terrible sewer level exists for a reason, one I remember fondly was one towards the end of the first act of Chrono Trigger (extremely mild spoilers for said level follow): It had a gimmick for the first part where you were told not to make a sound, and since there was a save point at the end that made its distinctive "ding" when being stepped on it counted as such and you faced the consequences. It also had a small comedy bit where you followed some monsters having trouble solving the puzzles ahead of you that also served to help get your bearings. Overall a pretty good sewer level.
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Mar 17, 2019 16:58
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 A couple of notes about this chapter. MW and I spent a while talking about the idea that the Golden Alpaca was some kind of abstraction or a form with which Alex and company were comfortable, but I am sort of upset that the game (at least so far) has never actually explained what it is or what it's supposed to represent. I thought maybe it was the Interdimensional Police coming around to check up on Alex, but to be honest, I'd expect them to be a lot tougher if that was the case. The Proclaimers from Star Ocean 3 did this concept way better, and it hadn't even revealed its big twist before they showed up. This episode taught me how to do master-bus limiting in Vegas because the music during the Golden Alpaca fight is at -0 dB (!). Thanks based YIIK. diacorn fucked around with this message at 01:10 on Mar 23, 2019 |
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Mar 23, 2019 00:53
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Andrew Allanson isn't just the game's composer, he's also the game's main writer. Also gently caress you Andrew, it wasn't enough to reference your previous game a billion times you also had to insert yourself too?
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Mar 23, 2019 03:10
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Here's the thing about defensive characters like Rory: they inherently slow down the game. They slow down the game in that you're taking time to manipulate them, and drag things out because you now have, say, one person on each side of the fight effectively nulled. Having something that moves the combat towards some kind of conclusion is generally preferable. Granted, you can tune a combat system to make combats are brief enough that you never notice that, or make the command process quicker, but neither of those are things that YIIK does. Now, many RPGs have a healer archetype that does the same kind of thing, and admittedly has the same kind of problem. The thing about healers over a protector at Rory is that they at least serve as a stopgap measure against things like random AI fuckery singling out a character for damage or bad random damage rolls and that sort of thing. You can take a character that's had some really bad hits and help them recover. But somebody like Rory doesn't undo damage, he prevents it, so you have to predict the damage being done. Which means if somebody's low on health, he can be useful to save their bacon if they get attacked, but if the enemy decides not to attack whoever Rory's shielding, he's worse than useless. Granted, it's possible to make protectors useful, if they can attack at the same time or offer some side buff or their protection is persistent over multiple turns. But you throw Alex's perfect defense panda in there, and you have to wonder what the designers were thinking. (Answer: they probably weren't thinking.)
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Mar 23, 2019 03:34
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Have I already talked about Bo from Lisa: The Painful in this thread, or was it the other YIIK thread?
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Mar 23, 2019 06:09
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Great, I just noticed this episode that on Alex's "facepalm" portrait, the area from the shoulders up stretch and squash rapidly when he talks, and now I find it very distracting.
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Mar 23, 2019 19:52
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Combat Lobster posted:Andrew Allanson isn't just the game's composer, he's also the game's main writer. Also gently caress you Andrew, it wasn't enough to reference your previous game a billion times you also had to insert yourself too? Yeah, the first composer Alex mentioned also contributed a track, so this game is postmodern in the sense that it is now accounting for the presence of the soundtrack developers in-universe, but in service of little more than a little high-five to themselves. Alien Rope Burn posted:Now, many RPGs have a healer archetype that does the same kind of thing, and admittedly has the same kind of problem. The thing about healers over a protector at Rory is that they at least serve as a stopgap measure against things like random AI fuckery singling out a character for damage or bad random damage rolls and that sort of thing. You can take a character that's had some really bad hits and help them recover. But somebody like Rory doesn't undo damage, he prevents it, so you have to predict the damage being done. Which means if somebody's low on health, he can be useful to save their bacon if they get attacked, but if the enemy decides not to attack whoever Rory's shielding, he's worse than useless. Honestly, what this got me to think about was RPGs where defensive character archetypes are important, such as in the Etrian Odyssey titles, where you have a character fairly dedicated to damage mitigation or soaking up hits because many encounters in that game have the potential to be incredibly lethal, so you need someone whose presence in the party actively prevents more fragile members from getting killed off. As you have pointed out, though, the issue is still that Rory has (so far) only one questionably effective way to do that, and it isn't even as good as an option we have had for much longer. Oh, and combat has generally been irritating, but I haven't seen any indication of it being particularly lethal to the party. Solitair posted:Have I already talked about Bo from Lisa: The Painful in this thread, or was it the other YIIK thread? That would be in the other thread I would imagine. Feel free to share your thoughts here.
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Mar 25, 2019 02:31
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I'm half-suspecting the game to go in one of these directions, none of which I want to see: Sammy Park's soul was 'stolen' and is going to be put into a robot body. Somehow this will not reference Ghost in the Shell but some property released 10-15 years later. Vella's soul is going to end up in the robot body for whatever reason. Vella has suffered the loss of alternate-reality Alex, thus giving him the chance to end up being her romantic interest without him actually having to put in any effort. Alex's monologues are actually him explaining the story to some alternate-reality version of him/Vella/Sammy.
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Mar 25, 2019 06:58
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ModeWondershot posted:That would be in the other thread I would imagine. Feel free to share your thoughts here. People were talking about whether or not a character who can't deal direct damage is a good idea, and Bo from LISA is the example that I immediately thought of. For those of you who don't know, Bo is a bard whose moves are all support songs, like inflicting status penalties on enemies and healing and buffing allies. I haven't played that far in LISA myself, but I've heard from those who had that he's one of the better party members you can find.
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Mar 25, 2019 19:36
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I don't understand why they felt the need to introduce a lolrandom wacky llama when there was a perfectly fine-looking boss looming in the distance there already.
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Mar 25, 2019 19:50
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SirSamVimes posted:I don't understand why they felt the need to introduce a lolrandom wacky llama when there was a perfectly fine-looking boss looming in the distance there already. for the post modder knee schism
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Mar 25, 2019 21:27
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Kangra posted:Vella has suffered the loss of alternate-reality Alex, thus giving him the chance to end up being her romantic interest without him actually having to put in any effort. Solitair posted:People were talking about whether or not a character who can't deal direct damage is a good idea, and Bo from LISA is the example that I immediately thought of. For those of you who don't know, Bo is a bard whose moves are all support songs, like inflicting status penalties on enemies and healing and buffing allies. I haven't played that far in LISA myself, but I've heard from those who had that he's one of the better party members you can find. LISA accomplishes this partly by limiting its pool of competing characters to several different subsystems. Brad, the main character, is still an amazing character, but his spot on the totem pole is highly variable because you can get one or both of his arms cut off, as well some late-third-act revelations. diacorn fucked around with this message at 02:42 on Mar 26, 2019 |
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Mar 26, 2019 02:37
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Solitair posted:People were talking about whether or not a character who can't deal direct damage is a good idea, and Bo from LISA is the example that I immediately thought of. For those of you who don't know, Bo is a bard whose moves are all support songs, like inflicting status penalties on enemies and healing and buffing allies. I haven't played that far in LISA myself, but I've heard from those who had that he's one of the better party members you can find. The problem with Rory is that he more or less can't do ANYTHING but sling items and take hits for others, and he has no special advantage in taking damage. He's not tougher or have any ability that makes him shine when taking damage. It'd be better if he was, say, like Lunamaria from Super Robot Wars, who never has great damage and her unit isn't super tough... normally. But when she uses Support Defense to take a hit for an ally, her high Defense + her unit's special defenses all kick in to do stuff like completely block the final boss's otherwise one-shot-your-unit-capable attacks with 0 damage taken. That's really what Rory should feel like. I would say that's too powerful for YIIK but the protagonist's first skill makes the party completely immune to damage until his next turn so...
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Mar 27, 2019 16:07
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Kchama posted:The problem with Rory is that he more or less can't do ANYTHING but sling items and take hits for others, and he has no special advantage in taking damage. He's not tougher or have any ability that makes him shine when taking damage. Depending on how you build Alex, he can be a lifesaver. I really shot myself in the foot by making him a glass cannon and had to start pumping defense. If I hadn't have declared Sweet Baby Kittymouth to never set foot in my party ever again, it would have been absolutely fine because he could have defended Alex instead of having each shot take off half his health. But in all honesty, after a few hours, your timing will be enough to dodge most attacks.
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Mar 27, 2019 16:16
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Mar 30, 2019 01:06
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So eventually I expect to have a chance to compare this unfavourably with Tales of the Abyss and Luke. However, I don't expect Alex will ever really be a better person, and the hamfisted monologues don't do much to dissuade me of that opinion. Especially not after the Court of Alex.
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Mar 30, 2019 07:11
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Cyouni posted:So eventually I expect to have a chance to compare this unfavourably with Tales of the Abyss and Luke. I'm pretty impressed that the game's managed to beat the odds and somehow dive even further into soliloquy. Moreover, the actual monologues don't really follow and disrupt the flow of the story. It's almost like someone at Ackk said, "This game needs more monologues so people will know what Alex is thinking and that he's not all bad", and inserted the Court of Alex and the bedroom sequence after the fact without seeing what came before or after.
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Mar 30, 2019 17:57
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Even in a medium more suited to monologues, like a novel or something, Alex's monologues don't do anything. They often just reiterate what just happened and give us a skimming glance as to his thoughts but his thoughts aren't really deep or interesting? They just reestablish him as a jerk and add nothing to his motivations beyond, "girl is hot." Even if I wanted to emphasize with Alex, he's such a cardboard cut out that I can't.
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Mar 30, 2019 18:50
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Alex's monologues are 
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Mar 30, 2019 19:31
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Unfortunately, I don know much about the banish bonuses due to the fact that there are hardly any soul survivors that you can fight post-golden alpaca, and that I just button through everything in the mind dungeon. What I do know is this: -The bonus can boost your given stat from 1-8 (8 being the highest I've seen and is very rare) -If you fail the minigame, the door will be locked and you won't receive any points from that door -If the soul survivor is on a skill door, you auto-purge it and skip the minigame but you won't receive any bonuses
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Mar 31, 2019 01:03
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Combat Lobster posted:Unfortunately, I don know much about the banish bonuses due to the fact that there are hardly any soul survivors that you can fight post-golden alpaca, and that I just button through everything in the mind dungeon. Did they really pretty much introduce an entire mechanic for the sake of one boss? I wouldn't put it past Ackk, but still.
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Mar 31, 2019 06:28
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Pretty much, the next time we would fight a soul survivor in such a way that we could use banish is near the end of the game as side quests; and there aren't that many either.
Combat Lobster fucked around with this message at 06:37 on Mar 31, 2019 |
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Mar 31, 2019 06:33
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Cyouni posted:Did they really pretty much introduce an entire mechanic for the sake of one boss? It wouldn't be the first poorly-thought-out thing in this game.
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Mar 31, 2019 14:51
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Combat Lobster posted:-The bonus can boost your given stat from 1-8 (8 being the highest I've seen and is very rare) Whaaaaaaaaaaat the hell. So the thing that is supposed to provide additional benefits for the level, even if it occurs in only one or two fights in the whole game, is gated behind completing the minigame twice, has a chance of doing nothing at all if you get the skill door, and if you fail the second time it suddenly turns into a malus that makes your level worse than if you hadn't done anything in the first place. ... This game is now 16% of a good idea.
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Mar 31, 2019 22:53
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