What games are you playing now?

I've heard great reviews from friends and others about Saga Frontier. I do plan on picking it up and finally trying it out for myself, so I appreciate both the review and reminder!

duerer said:

And now it's time for some solid oldies: SaGa Frontier Remastered (Switch, also on PC/PS)

This game is a total curio: originally a PSOne jRPG from SquareSoft, but oh so different from the Final Fantasies and other jRPGs, it feels very progressive to this very day.

The game is full of non-linear storytelling: choices and consequences are everywhere. There are no random encounters. The rpg character progression is outlandish. The battles are hard. The grind is inevitable but fun. The replay value is high. The remastered user interface is all right. Oh, and the music is world class.

If you want something different, be sure to try this one out.

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I purchased it earlier today and installed it, but I probably won't start right away.

Which story arc did you choose to play first? Do you know if there's a recommended order?

duerer said:

And now it's time for some solid oldies: SaGa Frontier Remastered (Switch, also on PC/PS)

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JDR13 said:

I purchased it earlier today and installed it, but I probably won't start right away.

Which story arc did you choose to play first? Do you know if there's a recommended order?

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Every race plays somewhat differently, and the humans are the most accessible for SaGa newbies.
Thus, I'd recommend playing the human characters first, especially Emilia, as her story is pretty straightforward.
(Leave Fuse to the end though.)

Also please note: SaGa games tend to have a very bad first impression, because they are so different from the norm. E.g. Emilia's story starts with a very confusing dungeon, but accept it as a warm-up for SaGa's peculiar gameplay.

Do NOT play SaGa as a jRPG, and do NOT play SaGa as a Western RPG.
SaGa is its own game: an improvisation-oriented battle against the Almighty RNG (which sounds very lame, but actually pretty much fun)

Fell Seal has made me re-appreciate just how much fun pure randomness can be during a game. Sometimes you get the critical and, well, sometimes the critical, it gets you!

duerer said:

Every race plays somewhat differently, and the humans are the most accessible for SaGa newbies.
Thus, I'd recommend playing the human characters first, especially Emilia, as her story is pretty straightforward.
(Leave Fuse to the end though.)

Also please note: SaGa games tend to have a very bad first impression, because they are so different from the norm. E.g. Emilia's story starts with a very confusing dungeon, but accept it as a warm-up for SaGa's peculiar gameplay.

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I played some of Emilia's story last night just to get a feel for it. Yeah, my first impression wasn't great.

Had no problem with the first dungeon. My issue was afterwards when you meet up with that group in their hideout. They immediately start talking about Cube as if the player is supposed to know what that is, and it's a little confusing. It's almost like something was lost in translation.

The gameplay mechanics seem interesting enough, but the writing so far is the typical nonsensical crap that I've come to expect from JRPGs.

She had been hunting the Minotaur since she landed on Crete.
The local legends spoke of the beast, and an industry sprang up around it. Trinkets, performances, and even scams fed the local economy. Entertaining enough, but she knew that somewhere on this island, the mythical beast lay in wait.
At last, after many days and nights on the hunt, she tracked the beast to the ruins beneath a decrepit castle of a long dead ancient monarch. Winding her way thru the labyrinth, she followed the echoing bellows of the perpetually enraged monster. Once she found it, she momentarily hesitated, thinking "I came here willingly?".
There was no going back.
Drawing her spear, I took a swig of key lime lacroix, grit my teeth, and prepared to dodge and dodge again.

I'm still slaying away in the world of Fell Seal, I've come across another tournament fight that was really good, and yesterday another series of battles that seem really beefed up compared to others, originating from something called an Ancient Path. I've done three of them so far, planning on doing the fourth in about an hour.

I think people should create a separate 'Let's play' thread if you're going to post 10+ times about a game. We don't need constant updates about the same playthrough.

I just tried the early access of Naudrion: Fall of the Empire. It's a third-person open-world RPG along the lines of Gothic/Risen and Two Worlds.

Not going to lie, it's pretty rough right now. That said, the current version is only 0.2.6, so he's got a long way to go.

The graphics are fairly simplistic, and the animations are a little janky, but I think it has some potential. He says it's inspired by Gothic and TES, and indeed parts of it do remind me of Gothic especially the music. I think it reminds me more of Two Worlds 1 though.

The music is the best part right now. It's reminiscent of Kai Rosenkranz's older stuff. I don't know if the dev actually did it himself, but it's pretty impressive if he did.

It's too unfinished for me in the current state, but I look forward to seeing what it's like when it's more polished.

I've put my NG+ playthrough of Bloodborne on hold for now. It's continuing to be quite a lot easier, since I'm overleveled. And considering I just know where everything is, it's getting a big monotonous.

So, I started a playthrough of Sekiro. Similar, but still quite different to the souls games. I tried a playthrough quite some time ago, but never made much progress. The setting is pretty nice, and I like the combat system. But one thing worries me. From what I understand you cannot grind your way into being more powerful than the devs want you to. You use experience points to unlock abilities and skills which you then use in combat. So that opens new avenues and more possibilities, but you don't get a flat effectiveness increase. You still need player skill to make use of them. And you can also upgrade your defense and offense, via 2 base stats, but those are upgrade-able via a different currency, which from what I understand is only dropped by mini-bosses. So they are limited. You can't farm them endlessly.

So, yeah, by my calculations it's gonna be a lot harder than Bloodborne. Since once you reach the character caps, you only get better by actually playing better, and there's no way to compensate for that in any other way. I'm a bit worried, but we'll see. Also, I'll try to go into this one as blind as possible. I've only watched 1-2 basics videos, to get a feel for what to expect.

Purchased IWD2 from GOG. Wasted my time fiddling around with patches and mods to make it look better and run in windowed mode. For anyone following in my footsteps I would recommended not using any of that stuff. The extra effort isn't worth it in my opinion vs. what you get in the GOG downloadable.

I didn't even know about this IWD2:EE mod. Does anyone know the current status of the project? Seems from official site it is still early days but I found stuff online where people are playing with it.

I have never been a turn-based vs. RTwP zealot. Have enjoyed both on many occasions. But I just finished playing Knights of the Chalice, and I have to say, really missing the turn based right now. Maybe I am now an official turn-based guy!

danutz_plusplus said:

From what I understand....

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Everything you said is accurate, from what I remember of my experience. Sekiro was certainly harder for me. Compared to the other games, timing is more important, and patience and preparation less so. It was a particulary difficult adjustment for me because in Dark Souls and Bloodborne, I'm a roller. I block only when necessary. In Sekiro, it's all about standing where the blow is coming and parrying it.

But like all their games, it's polished and balanced and fair, and a lot of fun in those moments when I wasn't angrily fighting a boss for the 20th time.

Sekiro was handing me my a** on a regular basis until I discovered you don’t have to perfectly time your blocks. If an enemy unleashes a combo just spam block instead of trying to time your block to each swing. The games still hard then but much more manageable.

After discovering that I quickly went on to get my platinum trophy. Excellent game.

Holy smokes, Sekiro is no joke. The razor thin margin of error for timing deflects is constantly kicking my ass. I tried it with an Xbox controller, and apparently I have the awful habbit of not keeping my fingers directly on the shoulder buttons. So by default I'm a split second slower at deflecting. I've spent 30 min just practicing with the immortal dude at camp. But it's just not even close to the randomness you encounter in actual fights.

So, I tried doing it with keyboard and mouse, and I seem to be faster than with the controller, but I'm really afraid for the abuse I'll be putting my work mouse through by blasting those buttons so fast and hard. Then I tried going back to controller, and somehow I can never manage anything more than fighting. I can hardly use my rope, and forget how to unlock from a target to run away, and all that.

But the fights themselves, omg I never seem to properly time my attacks. I'm always too slow at the start. I just feel I'm handicaped at this high requirement for timing. And I noticed that during the fight itself, I very rarely am able to focus on the lightning fast telegraph for how the enemy is gonna attack, to be able to react. I either need to focus on other enemies, since very rarely I'm able to isolate enemies. Or I just see a blur of movement, and can't time my deflects. It's seriously hard for me to do.

So I wonder what can I do. Is it simply that I need loads and loads of practice. And in time I'll be able to better react. During Bloodborne I managed to eek each and every fight and enounter, but since I could also improve my character, I never needed to be very good on my feet. But in this one I'm afraid that if I approach it similarly, I'll finally reach a wall of difficulty where I'll likely either need to spend 10h just repeats. And finally, either get good enough to overcome, or I'll just abandon.

Btw, I was somehow spoiled to one of the later bosses. The headless giant monkey. Holy shit that gave me vibest similar to the 2 giant Sharks in the Well in the fishing hamlet in Bloodborne.

Worst things about these games are just the dread I feel going back into them. I anticipate the way the game will mop the floor with me. And the ask me to come back for more. It’s a combination of curiosity for what’s to come, and dread for when I need to get back into the same fight I spent 30min last time. I’m very early in the game. I’m at the fight with the chained ogre. And his attacks plus his grabs are infuriating.

After the glory that was Fell Seal, I've gone on to another rpg-maker type game, named Order from Caos. I believe this might have been made by someone without a full command of english, as the text is often....interesting, to say the least. It does add to the comedic value, though. The combat seems odd, you almost seem better off by simply defending and building up battle points then cutting loose, rather than swinging every round. An interesting design to say the least, right now I'm going through a few quests.

danutz_plusplus said:

Worst things about these games are just the dread I feel going back into them. I anticipate the way the game will mop the floor with me. And the ask me to come back for more. It’s a combination of curiosity for what’s to come, and dread for when I need to get back into the same fight I spent 30min last time. I’m very early in the game. I’m at the fight with the chained ogre. And his attacks plus his grabs are infuriating.

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FryderykG says to man up and put your big-boy pants on.

https://screenrant.com/dark-souls-boss-fight-blindfold-piano-no-damage/

JDR13 said:

FryderykG says to man up and put your big-boy pants on.

https://screenrant.com/dark-souls-boss-fight-blindfold-piano-no-damage/

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Didn't exactly put on my big-boy pants, but I manage to overpowered the chained ogre and finish him off. I was overpowered as hell. I got the flame vent prosthetic and hit him 3-4 times and just wailed on him while he was on fire. And I also bit into the candy that grants bonus attack power and defense, just to make sure I can finish him as fast as possible, and thus reducing the risk he's gonna grab me. And even overpowered like this, he managed to kill me once, but then I resurrected and spammed him with flame vent again, and then kept wailing on him. He's just impossible to dodge. Onto the next boss that'll give me nightmares.

Taking a break from the recent SaGa: Frontier Remaster, it is time to connect old and new with Saviors of Sapphire Wings (Switch, also on PC)

This is a very well made Wizardry clone blobber, but with a certain Japanese flavor.
(Japan is very keen to keep the Wizardry legacy alive)

The story is a unique anime take on the Knights of the Round Table (melodrama a DD-cup boobs aplenty), but the gameplay is pure bliss: a surprisingly Western-style character system, fun dungeons, great artwork, snappy user interface.

Also the game is bundled with the more hardcore Stranger of Sword City, which has roughly the same mechanism, has a very dark atmosphere, plus some very hardcore gameplay twists (very flexible party setup, permadeath, unique "character age governs survival vs experience" logic, etc)
Talk about value for money. . .

If you are into Wizardry, or old school blobbers in general, I recommend both games, as they are two sides of the same coin: Saviors is Wizardry light and casual, while Stranger is Wizardry dark and hardcore.

I played 15 mins or so of Diablo Immortal on a friends phone. As someone who hasn't played a phone game since Snake on a Nokia it's very impressive. I can't really say much else or give a comparison to Diablo3 off such a short time with it. Pretty cool, though.

danutz_plusplus said:

Didn't exactly put on my big-boy pants, but I manage to overpowered the chained ogre and finish him off. I was overpowered as hell. I got the flame vent prosthetic and hit him 3-4 times and just wailed on him while he was on fire. And I also bit into the candy that grants bonus attack power and defense, just to make sure I can finish him as fast as possible, and thus reducing the risk he's gonna grab me. And even overpowered like this, he managed to kill me once, but then I resurrected and spammed him with flame vent again, and then kept wailing on him. He's just impossible to dodge. Onto the next boss that'll give me nightmares.

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I had to give up on Sekiro, it was too hard for me. I've played all the Souls games but my play style was never the type of build/style required in Sekiro. Loved the game and the setting but just couldn't hack it, parrying is just to hard for me. Finished the Genichiro boss after 50 tries and then gave up on the game. I just lost interest I guess. Hoping that the upcoming Elden Ring is more similar to the other Souls-games.