February 2021 Chat Thread: Posting Stock is Going Up, Up, Up!

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > February 2021 Chat Thread: Posting Stock is Going Up, Up, Up!

«‹›8 »

Who is the coolest, raddest demon lady in all the land? This poll is closed.
Bowsette	62	17.22%
Bowsette	40	11.11%
Bowsette	44	12.22%
Bowsette	39	10.83%
Bowsette	47	13.06%
	128	35.56%
Total:	195 votes

[Edit Poll (moderators only)]

Cardiovorax: Jun 5, 2011; I mean, if you're a successful actress and you go out of the house in a skirt and without underwear, knowing that paparazzi are just waiting for opportunities like this and that it has happened many times before, then there's really nobody you can blame for it but yourself.

Oh hey, Harrow, congrats to your promotion. Man, it's really hard to keep up with who is or isn't a mod these days, it changes really quickly.

Bravely Default is a great series, in my own opinion, and I really love it as an homage to the classic Final Fantasy 5 gameplay. I just recently picked that game up again now that it can be easily emulated on smartphones and it's really fun playing the old GBA game on the go again like it's 2006.

# ¿ Feb 1, 2021 15:32

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 04:18

Cardiovorax: Jun 5, 2011; I mean, if you're a successful actress and you go out of the house in a skirt and without underwear, knowing that paparazzi are just waiting for opportunities like this and that it has happened many times before, then there's really nobody you can blame for it but yourself.

I'm a bit of an outlier in that I actually enjoyed getting to kick everyone's asses again with all my new abilities and classes.

# ¿ Feb 1, 2021 15:39

Cardiovorax: Jun 5, 2011; I mean, if you're a successful actress and you go out of the house in a skirt and without underwear, knowing that paparazzi are just waiting for opportunities like this and that it has happened many times before, then there's really nobody you can blame for it but yourself.

Well, it isn't out yet, but I always thought that Werewolf was the worst of the old White Wolf game lines and with how Vampire Bloodlines 2 seems to be turning out by all accounts, I gotta admit I'm thoroughly sceptical on the whole thing.

# ¿ Feb 1, 2021 15:47

Cardiovorax: Jun 5, 2011; I mean, if you're a successful actress and you go out of the house in a skirt and without underwear, knowing that paparazzi are just waiting for opportunities like this and that it has happened many times before, then there's really nobody you can blame for it but yourself.

Really excited for that one. Lacrimosa of DANA was great fun and Samurai Sanders says Ys 9 is also pretty decent.

# ¿ Feb 1, 2021 15:51

Cardiovorax: Jun 5, 2011; I mean, if you're a successful actress and you go out of the house in a skirt and without underwear, knowing that paparazzi are just waiting for opportunities like this and that it has happened many times before, then there's really nobody you can blame for it but yourself.

I always thought that enforced multi-day structure for dungeon dives was a bit of a weird direction for them to take it. In P4, you could conceivably finish every dungeon on the first day it's available and then just be done with it, although it was a real chore to do so. With how much of the game revolves around time management and structuring your schedule the way you want it to, it seems a bit counterproductive.

# ¿ Feb 1, 2021 15:59

Cardiovorax: Jun 5, 2011; I mean, if you're a successful actress and you go out of the house in a skirt and without underwear, knowing that paparazzi are just waiting for opportunities like this and that it has happened many times before, then there's really nobody you can blame for it but yourself.

Making combat dynamic and giving it a degree of complexity over what most JRPGs have is pretty much Shin Megami Tensei's whole thing, so you might enjoy other entries to the IP as well.

# ¿ Feb 1, 2021 16:05

Cardiovorax: Jun 5, 2011; I mean, if you're a successful actress and you go out of the house in a skirt and without underwear, knowing that paparazzi are just waiting for opportunities like this and that it has happened many times before, then there's really nobody you can blame for it but yourself.

Enjoy your new Kaiba Station.

# ¿ Feb 1, 2021 16:13

Cardiovorax: Jun 5, 2011; I mean, if you're a successful actress and you go out of the house in a skirt and without underwear, knowing that paparazzi are just waiting for opportunities like this and that it has happened many times before, then there's really nobody you can blame for it but yourself.

Real hurthling! posted:

The Medium - poop from a butt. trying to be silent hill but nothing cool going on. slow walking, long boring cutscenes

The facial animations are also weirdly terrible.

# ¿ Feb 1, 2021 16:22

Cardiovorax: Jun 5, 2011; I mean, if you're a successful actress and you go out of the house in a skirt and without underwear, knowing that paparazzi are just waiting for opportunities like this and that it has happened many times before, then there's really nobody you can blame for it but yourself.

If you wait long enough, it still might get ported eventually. No one expected P4G to ever come to PC either.

# ¿ Feb 1, 2021 17:40

Cardiovorax: Jun 5, 2011; I mean, if you're a successful actress and you go out of the house in a skirt and without underwear, knowing that paparazzi are just waiting for opportunities like this and that it has happened many times before, then there's really nobody you can blame for it but yourself.

What I'd like to see repeated in an SMT game would be Digital Devil Saga 2's "joint attack" system, or whatever they called it. Basically, if you had certain abilities on all your characters, you could use all their turns at the same time to apply a combined effect of a higher tier. Get enough debuffs on each character and you can group-cast Debilitate, for example. Since the game used press-turn and you couldn't go into the negatives, this was a really useful way to get the most out of a leftover turn and do some real damage. It also gave some tactical complexity to your loadout because it didn't just matter how good each ability was on its own, but also what it could give you when combined with others.

# ¿ Feb 1, 2021 18:11

Cardiovorax: Jun 5, 2011; I mean, if you're a successful actress and you go out of the house in a skirt and without underwear, knowing that paparazzi are just waiting for opportunities like this and that it has happened many times before, then there's really nobody you can blame for it but yourself.

Did they just give the likelihood of their game being released in any given month in the form of a Gaussian distribution? That's novel.

# ¿ Feb 1, 2021 18:23

Cardiovorax: Jun 5, 2011; I mean, if you're a successful actress and you go out of the house in a skirt and without underwear, knowing that paparazzi are just waiting for opportunities like this and that it has happened many times before, then there's really nobody you can blame for it but yourself.

Harrow posted:

Yeah that joint attack system sounds really cool. I should play the Digital Devil Saga games sometime.

The DDS duology had some really neat ideas, but you might still not enjoy them as games, to be honest. As SMT games, they're weird because they follow a more standard JRPG structure of giving you a party of characters to who you can assign abilities at will, no demon negotiation or contracting. As JRPGs, they're real throwbacks and deep into the hardcore end of the pool because they're basically just one long-rear end (and very difficult) dungeon crawl after another, stitched together by non-interactive cutscenes. No matter from which end of the spectrum you approached them, they were a bit... contentious.

I think they're basically the high point and the most refined expression of the Press Turn system in the entire series, though.

Cardiovorax fucked around with this message at 18:45 on Feb 1, 2021

# ¿ Feb 1, 2021 18:31

Cardiovorax: Jun 5, 2011; I mean, if you're a successful actress and you go out of the house in a skirt and without underwear, knowing that paparazzi are just waiting for opportunities like this and that it has happened many times before, then there's really nobody you can blame for it but yourself.

wuggles posted:

It�s not a Gaussian distribution because it�s discrete

Dammit. Why do I keep getting that wrong? Thanks for the correction.

# ¿ Feb 1, 2021 18:50

Cardiovorax: Jun 5, 2011; I mean, if you're a successful actress and you go out of the house in a skirt and without underwear, knowing that paparazzi are just waiting for opportunities like this and that it has happened many times before, then there's really nobody you can blame for it but yourself.

Like A Dragon has the (on average) oldest cast that I think I've ever seen in a JRPG.

# ¿ Feb 1, 2021 19:45

Cardiovorax: Jun 5, 2011; I mean, if you're a successful actress and you go out of the house in a skirt and without underwear, knowing that paparazzi are just waiting for opportunities like this and that it has happened many times before, then there's really nobody you can blame for it but yourself.

I wasn't counting those for the purposes of that, because they're just an excuse to have a scantily dressed preteen and pretend it isn't creepy anyway.

# ¿ Feb 1, 2021 19:51

Cardiovorax: Jun 5, 2011; I mean, if you're a successful actress and you go out of the house in a skirt and without underwear, knowing that paparazzi are just waiting for opportunities like this and that it has happened many times before, then there's really nobody you can blame for it but yourself.

The D-Counter was honestly a perfectly decent idea that would have worked great as a depletable strategic resource in any other game. It just didn't work very well in a series for which "you can turn into a dragon to stomp things" is one of its core features and biggest attraction.

I always thought that a lot of the reason why Dragon Quarter did so badly was not because any of its experimental ideas were in and of themselves bad, but rather because they were highly experimental at all in an established series where the player base just didn't want that kind of massive deviations from the existing formula. If you treat it as a standalone title rather than as the fifth entry in a long-running IP, it works much better.

# ¿ Feb 1, 2021 20:44

Cardiovorax: Jun 5, 2011; I mean, if you're a successful actress and you go out of the house in a skirt and without underwear, knowing that paparazzi are just waiting for opportunities like this and that it has happened many times before, then there's really nobody you can blame for it but yourself.

Harrow posted:

I think the reason I liked it was because it really sold the power of dragons. Using your D-Form in Dragon Quarter is an "I win" button right up to the very end, but it's a very limited resource. While it does remove the power fantasy of "your guy is a dragon and becoming a dragon is his main power," it replaces it with something that I think does a great job of showing why dragons are such a big deal in Dragon Quarter.

Yeah, this is something I absolutely have to give the game. In most Breath of Fire games, your dragon form is a tool, and a pretty powerful one at that, but it's never even close to being as overpowering as the D-Form in Dragon Quarter. In the other Breath of Fire games, the importance and power of dragons is often more of an informed attribute than anything - your player character is powerful, but not that much more powerful than all the enemies you fight over the course of the game.

Dragon Quarter, on the other hand, establishes right from the beginning that you could basically charbroil every boss fight in the game back-to-back if you were willing to go whole hog on your D-Counter for it, and it makes you believe it, too. It makes you feel like a big deal from the moment you get it, while the other games often have to resort to just repeatedly telling you that you are a big deal.

# ¿ Feb 1, 2021 21:15

Cardiovorax: Jun 5, 2011; I mean, if you're a successful actress and you go out of the house in a skirt and without underwear, knowing that paparazzi are just waiting for opportunities like this and that it has happened many times before, then there's really nobody you can blame for it but yourself.

No, that's basically it, really. The same things happen every time, you just don't get to see the full story until you reach 1/4.

# ¿ Feb 1, 2021 21:51

Cardiovorax: Jun 5, 2011; I mean, if you're a successful actress and you go out of the house in a skirt and without underwear, knowing that paparazzi are just waiting for opportunities like this and that it has happened many times before, then there's really nobody you can blame for it but yourself.

verbal enema posted:

Is there an Amazing Cultivation Simulator thread

https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3945892

# ¿ Feb 1, 2021 22:56

Cardiovorax: Jun 5, 2011; I mean, if you're a successful actress and you go out of the house in a skirt and without underwear, knowing that paparazzi are just waiting for opportunities like this and that it has happened many times before, then there's really nobody you can blame for it but yourself.

Video game combat is always formulaic. It comes with having baked-in combat mechanics where any given thing either works or is essentially physically impossible.

# ¿ Feb 1, 2021 23:36

Cardiovorax: Jun 5, 2011; I mean, if you're a successful actress and you go out of the house in a skirt and without underwear, knowing that paparazzi are just waiting for opportunities like this and that it has happened many times before, then there's really nobody you can blame for it but yourself.

If nothing else, it still has more depth to it than Final Fantasy-style "just cast the most powerful spell you have every time" combat. Squeezing out as many turns as you can while keeping up your health and defensive buffs in the correct order involves some actual thought. If it was trivial, SMT games wouldn't have the reputation for being fair but challenging that they do.

# ¿ Feb 2, 2021 00:40

Cardiovorax: Jun 5, 2011; I mean, if you're a successful actress and you go out of the house in a skirt and without underwear, knowing that paparazzi are just waiting for opportunities like this and that it has happened many times before, then there's really nobody you can blame for it but yourself.

That doesn't really make them sound any more appealing, tbh.

# ¿ Feb 2, 2021 01:01

Cardiovorax: Jun 5, 2011; I mean, if you're a successful actress and you go out of the house in a skirt and without underwear, knowing that paparazzi are just waiting for opportunities like this and that it has happened many times before, then there's really nobody you can blame for it but yourself.

When you boil it down to the broadest strokes, no combat system is going to sound deep. The depth comes from how much juggling you have to do in a fight to keep all that working - you have to deal damage, buff, debuff, undo enemy buffs, make sure you're not using the wrong element when they're shielding, you have to get more turns, and you have to do all of that in the right order against an enemy who can usually two- or three-shot you. It's actually pretty intense, because a single mistake can mean your entire group gets wiped.

That's what makes it more complex and engaging, not merely the fact that it has those system.

# ¿ Feb 2, 2021 01:05

Cardiovorax: Jun 5, 2011; I mean, if you're a successful actress and you go out of the house in a skirt and without underwear, knowing that paparazzi are just waiting for opportunities like this and that it has happened many times before, then there's really nobody you can blame for it but yourself.

Nate RFB posted:

In Nocturne you need to juggle far more moving parts and all aspects of how they synergize together is part of what makes it more challenging and requiring of the aforementioned buffs/debuffs.

Yeah, basically. And the same applies to the Digital Devil Saga games too, due to being basically just an even-more-refined and more conventionally JRPG-like take on the SMT press turn formula. The boss fight against Meghanada at the end of DDS2 is the most excited I can remember ever getting about a fight in any video game I've played. I went into it somewhat underlevelled and it was gruelling. It took me over half a dozen tries until I finally found the right composition of skills and passives and when I finally defeated him, it was by the skin of my teeth and with only one character left standing. I was on the edge of my seat the entire time and think I literally cheered out loud when he finally died. The adrenaline was real.

Anyone who thinks these games are simple or formulaic just because you can sum up the fundamentals of the combat system in three or four sentences is really doing them an injustice.

# ¿ Feb 2, 2021 02:26

Cardiovorax: Jun 5, 2011; I mean, if you're a successful actress and you go out of the house in a skirt and without underwear, knowing that paparazzi are just waiting for opportunities like this and that it has happened many times before, then there's really nobody you can blame for it but yourself.

My favourite memory of playing Vice City is turning on the Infinite Car Mass cheat and just driving around the city in a big circle as I punted cars all over the place and into buildings like a train hitting an oversized beach ball.

# ¿ Feb 2, 2021 02:33

Cardiovorax: Jun 5, 2011; I mean, if you're a successful actress and you go out of the house in a skirt and without underwear, knowing that paparazzi are just waiting for opportunities like this and that it has happened many times before, then there's really nobody you can blame for it but yourself.

Walla posted:

And yet, for all of my moaning about standard turn based systems I could happily replay my favorite Final Fantasies (4, 6 and 10) a dozen times over without cringing. Especially the SNES ones since they preclude all the extra padding that the 3D versions feel compelled to include.

Replaying old games like that is like comfort food. One would not say that it is good for you, but it makes you feel better.

# ¿ Feb 2, 2021 03:06

Cardiovorax: Jun 5, 2011; I mean, if you're a successful actress and you go out of the house in a skirt and without underwear, knowing that paparazzi are just waiting for opportunities like this and that it has happened many times before, then there's really nobody you can blame for it but yourself.

Blue Labrador posted:

Like the only early game battles and mini bosses I remember from the modern titles are from Persona 3's early game, where having Yukari and Junpei's elemental weaknesses forced on you made their presence in your party actively detrimental. While that was a little frustrating, I enjoy the little meta-narrative and tactical variance that added to those encounters.

This kind of thing ruins games for me and I can't imagine a game that I think would be improved by it. "Nuh-uh, you need to suck for this stretch because we say so" just is not good game design.

# ¿ Feb 2, 2021 03:25

Cardiovorax: Jun 5, 2011; I mean, if you're a successful actress and you go out of the house in a skirt and without underwear, knowing that paparazzi are just waiting for opportunities like this and that it has happened many times before, then there's really nobody you can blame for it but yourself.

And then monsters attack you every twelve steps anyway and you just wonder why you even bothered.

# ¿ Feb 2, 2021 03:39

Cardiovorax: Jun 5, 2011; I mean, if you're a successful actress and you go out of the house in a skirt and without underwear, knowing that paparazzi are just waiting for opportunities like this and that it has happened many times before, then there's really nobody you can blame for it but yourself.

Blue Labrador posted:

Yeah, that kind of design would absolutely be a little antagonistic, so I understand why people aren't looking for that and why Atlus wouldn't implement that into their blockbuster franchise, but I wouldn't call it bad. I think those kinds of circumstances can help sell an atmosphere or narrative without necessitating cutscenes or dialogue, and I think that's cool.

A lot of classic JRPGs had plot-mandated switches between parties and characters, so I'm sure a lot of people would agree with you there. I just happen to be one of those people who completely hate it. Every single time something like that happens, it feels to me like the game is ripping the controller out of my hands to make me do things its way when I'd rather be doing something else at that moment. If I wanted to have that kind of experience, I'd read a book or watch a movie instead.

I understand that this is in its own way a minority opinion, though - I strongly believe that every medium has its own strengths and that video games as a whole would be better off for it if they stopped trying to also be everything else in addition to just being games. I'm one of those people who don't mind games not being as cinematic and visually bombastic as movies or not having the same depth of writing as books do, because those aren't what I'm looking for in a game in the first place.

# ¿ Feb 2, 2021 03:59

Cardiovorax: Jun 5, 2011; I mean, if you're a successful actress and you go out of the house in a skirt and without underwear, knowing that paparazzi are just waiting for opportunities like this and that it has happened many times before, then there's really nobody you can blame for it but yourself.

Siralim has procedurally generated levels, although it's not really a roguelike in any other sense.

# ¿ Feb 2, 2021 04:43

Cardiovorax: Jun 5, 2011; I mean, if you're a successful actress and you go out of the house in a skirt and without underwear, knowing that paparazzi are just waiting for opportunities like this and that it has happened many times before, then there's really nobody you can blame for it but yourself.

RazzleDazzleHour posted:

On the flipside I cannot remember the last time in an SMT game I said to myself "the problem with this fight is my stats are too low and the solution to winning is more stats"

As tired as the comparison is and as much as it may annoy some people, SMT is a lot like the Dark Souls series in that even when you fail, you rarely feel like the game just wasn't giving you a fair chance. There's nearly always something that you could, in retrospect, have done better. It's rarely a pure matter of numbers against numbers in the way fights in many other JRPGs often are, and I think that's a big part of what makes the series so popular.

# ¿ Feb 2, 2021 04:58

Cardiovorax: Jun 5, 2011; I mean, if you're a successful actress and you go out of the house in a skirt and without underwear, knowing that paparazzi are just waiting for opportunities like this and that it has happened many times before, then there's really nobody you can blame for it but yourself.

pls no unmarked spoilers, I still haven't finished that game yet.

# ¿ Feb 2, 2021 05:50

Cardiovorax: Jun 5, 2011; I mean, if you're a successful actress and you go out of the house in a skirt and without underwear, knowing that paparazzi are just waiting for opportunities like this and that it has happened many times before, then there's really nobody you can blame for it but yourself.

Would you mind giving me a short breakdown of how Cyber Shadow plays? I keep hearing about it. The store page is tagged metroidvania, but Steam is a bit inflationary about using that tag and the description doesn't go into a lot of detail about how it really works as a game. Does it have the whole open world structure, revisiting areas as you gain more movement powers etc. thing or is it more of a level-based game?

# ¿ Feb 2, 2021 07:07

Cardiovorax: Jun 5, 2011; I mean, if you're a successful actress and you go out of the house in a skirt and without underwear, knowing that paparazzi are just waiting for opportunities like this and that it has happened many times before, then there's really nobody you can blame for it but yourself.

Alright, probably not my kind of game, then.

# ¿ Feb 2, 2021 07:09

Cardiovorax: Jun 5, 2011; I mean, if you're a successful actress and you go out of the house in a skirt and without underwear, knowing that paparazzi are just waiting for opportunities like this and that it has happened many times before, then there's really nobody you can blame for it but yourself.

Thanks, that's exactly what I wanted to know. Probably saved me 20 dollars there.

# ¿ Feb 2, 2021 07:18

Cardiovorax: Jun 5, 2011; I mean, if you're a successful actress and you go out of the house in a skirt and without underwear, knowing that paparazzi are just waiting for opportunities like this and that it has happened many times before, then there's really nobody you can blame for it but yourself.

I kind of suspect that part of it is just that the player demographics are getting older and expect games to still be as hard as we all thought games were when we got into the hobby as a kid, rather than merely as difficult as those games actually are. If you put them side by side, I'm not sure that most of those modern (and admittedly overtutorialized) games would really be any easier than many of the games that we grew up playing. It's hard to be an eight year old again, though, so there's no real way to compare that kind of thing.

The recent success of the Soulslike genre has created a real upswing in interest in games that explicitly advertise themselves as particularly challenging, though, so that certainly also has something to do with it.

# ¿ Feb 2, 2021 08:02

Cardiovorax: Jun 5, 2011; I mean, if you're a successful actress and you go out of the house in a skirt and without underwear, knowing that paparazzi are just waiting for opportunities like this and that it has happened many times before, then there's really nobody you can blame for it but yourself.

I always love it when you can look at a cat and just know exactly what it is thinking at that moment.

# ¿ Feb 2, 2021 08:07

Cardiovorax: Jun 5, 2011; I mean, if you're a successful actress and you go out of the house in a skirt and without underwear, knowing that paparazzi are just waiting for opportunities like this and that it has happened many times before, then there's really nobody you can blame for it but yourself.

That one's a bit more vague, but my money is on "no, it is time to pay attention to me now, filthy hoo-man."

# ¿ Feb 2, 2021 10:04

Cardiovorax: Jun 5, 2011; I mean, if you're a successful actress and you go out of the house in a skirt and without underwear, knowing that paparazzi are just waiting for opportunities like this and that it has happened many times before, then there's really nobody you can blame for it but yourself.

In my defense, I'm not a cat whisperer, I just love the really obvious "i wanna eat that bird" expression on Kirby up there. :v:

# ¿ Feb 2, 2021 10:08

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 04:18

Cardiovorax: Jun 5, 2011; I mean, if you're a successful actress and you go out of the house in a skirt and without underwear, knowing that paparazzi are just waiting for opportunities like this and that it has happened many times before, then there's really nobody you can blame for it but yourself.

It is not the anime that is bad, it is bad games that are bad.

# ¿ Feb 2, 2021 19:10

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > February 2021 Chat Thread: Posting Stock is Going Up, Up, Up!

«‹›8 »