#Is great for some of the more tutorial bits of early quests

[fishmech]

also people don't talk about it enough but it is funny that space war crimes general Obama gets put in full bottom storage and also that you can fuck with him by just deliberately waiting at him

[esamastation]

Gamer girl gets transmigrated into a farm boy Chapter 4 [<<Prologue | <Chapter 3 || Chapter 5>>] Ao3 link

-

So, gambling turned out to be a bit of a bust. It's not a complete loss, though, Van did multiply his starting bid of five silver to seventy four silver pieces in total. Compared to using exploits it's nothing - Katie could've made that in her sleep, if the NPCs still worked like they do in the game. But seeing that it's still in the very early tutorial section… it could be worse.

And then there's the level up. Van's very first this time around. Cue the confetti…

[Farmboy] [Van] [Lvl. 2 Commoner]

It feels pretty good. And what's waiting below in the stats screen is even better.

[You have 2 unused Stat Points.] [You have 1 unused Skill Point]

The first ones always feel a bit special.

In Age of Tales you get two status points and one skill point each time you level up and can then allocate those points as you wish on your character screen. It's not the only way to get points - there are quests, special items and a couple of accessories that affect how you accrue points - but until you're making real money in the game, you're stuck with what level ups dish out. Which is fine - early levels until about lvl. 20 are pretty cheap.

Of course, Van doesn't have a class yet, and so no skill tree to assign his shiny new skill point to - but he can assign his stat points, if he wants to. Which brings up the question. 

What is he going to specialise in this time? 

Van's got the base stats for an easy start as a Paladin, obviously - but Katie just did a Paladin run, and while it was fun, she wouldn't say it was so great that she's eager to repeat the experience. Especially if this really is a transmigration isekai situation - which she's still not thinking about, thank you very much, that's an existential crisis that can wait until nightfall.

At any rate, getting stuck forever as a Paladin would be… well, it would probably be fine. It was alright, playing the goody two shoes lawful good himbo with a heart of gold. It went great with the whole cliché secret chosen one and the lost heir to a great house thing at least… not that there were more than, like, three characters in the whole game who even acknowledged the player character's class. Van got pretty much the same reaction from everyone regardless of whether he was a Rogue or a Wizard or Paladin - it was just the big black and white moral choices that affected those sorts of things.

Age of Tales is Age of Tales-ing, what can you do?

Anyway, going at it as a Paladin again would be easy… but boring. Katie would have to think about it carefully before committing to anything. Though she hasn't quite ruled out the use of cheats yet and is still hoping that Van might be able to use exploits to his benefit later, the gambler showed her that things are different here. Never mind the fact that some features of Age of Tales are just missing, like the passive Wisdom buff. What if she chose a class with features that just don't work anymore?

Yeah, Van's next class would take some careful consideration, and she wouldn't be assigning his status points until she knew, either. Class selection wouldn't be until Urgol's Camp in Chapter 2, anyway, so there's no point fretting about it now.

For now Van has some silver to spend and shopping to do.

He considers visiting the fortune teller first, just in case the duplication glitch is still possible… but he doesn't have a gold bar, and the glitch never worked with anything else, and beyond that the fortune teller doesn't really do much. Also, he has The Incident to prepare for, too, and a limited amount of money.

So, with a full coin purse in hand, Van turns his attention to the market instead. First things first - weapon and armour.

The smithy stands on the other end of the market square, with smoke chugging out of its chimney at steady puffs. There are some shields on display in the front and a big wooden sword on top of the building, advertising "Blakeley's Blades - in business for more than three generations!"

"Hello," Van calls, entering the place.

Inside the air is hot and thick, with the smell of smoke and metal hanging heavy in the room. In the background there's the steady clink-clink-clink of a hammer on an anvil - an apprentice, hammering out some nails in the back. 

"Welcome," an older teenager, eighteen at most, comes forward. "How can we help you?"

[Blacksmith's Apprentice] [Jaro Amagris] [Lvl. 15 Commoner]

"I'd like to see what you have for sale, please," Van says.

"Well, what we have ready is over there," the older apprentice says, pointing towards a table loaded with a number of wooden boxes and buckets full of different metal crafts - nails, candle holders, hinges… "But if you want something specific, you will have to wait until the master gets back - he's out on business."

"Thanks, I'll just take a look," Van says and moves to the table. 

Much to his delight, an Age of Tales shop menu pops up.

[Blakeley's Blades Blacksmith]

[Small Iron Nail - 10 copper pieces] [Small Iron Hook - 13 copper pieces] [Small Iron Clasp - 15 copper pieces] …

And so on, in a surprisingly long list from cheapest to the most expensive. It's a lot of small iron stuff, different types of nails, cloak pins, buckles and buttons, eating utensils, heads of farming tools, and so on and so on, ending with the most expensive items.

… [Cast Iron Skillet - 35 silver pieces] [Cast Iron Cooking Pot - 40 silver pieces] [Short Sword - 50 silver pieces] 

It's a lot more items than Van had been expecting - and yet, fewer weapons. There are plenty of knives - Cooking Knife, Lvl. 1, goes for a nice round 20 silver pieces while Whittling knife, Lvl. 1 goes for 25 - but there's no daggers or throwing knives or anything like that. There isn't even metal ammunition for a sling. There's just one short sword on sale.

And no armour whatsoever. 

"Do you not sell any armour?" Van asks, confused. 

"Er, no?" Jaro Amagris says, giving him a strange look. "We don't make armour, really, though I suppose we can give it a try, if you want to order some. Or you could try at the Madam Arbury's, they might have something."

Van blinks, confused. "Madam Arbury's?"

"The tailor," Jaro clarifies.

There's a tailor? "Oh, okay. Uh. Where is it?"

"It's just across from the church - big windows with dresses, you can't miss it," the apprentice says with a shrug. "I think they have some padded coats and stuff."

Huh. That's interesting. You could get some gambesons and the like in the game too, but all armour and weaponry was bought from blacksmiths. This is… different.

"What d'you need armour for?" the younger apprentice, a boy of maybe ten or eleven, asks from between his hammering. His eyes shine eagerly on his sweaty, soot-stained face. Van glances at the air above him.

[Blacksmith's Apprentice] [Denny Rivercross] [Lvl. 3 Commoner]

The kid squints at Van.  "Are you going to join the army or something?" he asks.

Yeah, eventually, unfortunately, if things follow game plot. "No, no, I just got a bit of money, and I always wanted to try it," Van says quickly and motions at himself. "I mean… I think I'd make a good warrior. What do you think?" He flexes an arm, just because he can. And because Van's biceps are massive.

The younger blacksmith's apprentice bounces a little, clearly full of barely contained kid energy. "Oh yeah! You could be a knight!"

The older apprentice snorts. "Yeah, I don't think size alone is enough to become a knight, Denny," he says, looking Van up and down. "Though it probably helps…"

Denny bounces again. "Jaro, can we make armour for him?" the kid asks eagerly. "I'm so tired of making nails!"

"Well, like I said, we could give it a try," Jaro answers dubiously, still eyeing Van. "If he can pay for it."

Van shrugs. "I might, I might not. How long would it take to make it?"

"Depends on what you want," Jaro answers, taking a hammer lying on a table nearby and swinging it thoughtfully. "Some things take longer to make. And whether you're fine with us trying our hand at it, or if you want a master to make it matters too. He'll be faster - but it will cost you more."

"Hmm… say I wanted a chest plate, a cuirass, and you made it - how long would it take you?" Van asks, rubbing his chin on thought.

Jaro shrugs. "I've never made one and we're pretty busy, so… maybe a week or two?"

… by which time, Van would be at Ulgor's Camp and Valthor's minions would've already torched Westbrook to the ground.

Assuming, of course, that events followed game plot.

"Hmm," Van hums, wondering. In the game there's nothing you can do to prevent the destruction of Westbrook and the Gylcross farm - no matter what choices the player made, a scripted event was a scripted event. But maybe here and now… maybe there is something he can do.

He'd know once the Rift was opened.

In either case, a week is too long - he needs the armour for the battle in town, and that's in three days - and after that, even if the town survived, he might not see Westbrook again in months, if not years. There's no point in ordering anything made here.

"Well, it was a nice dream," Van sighs, a bit disappointed. "I guess I'll try my luck at the tailor's."

"Uh-huh," Jaro the senior apprentice agrees, clearly unimpressed, and drops the hammer on the table. "Alright. Anything else we can do for you?"

With no weapon-worthy knives and the only sword on sale being prohibitively expensive with Van's meagre budget… "Any chance you might have any spears or something lying around in here?"

Jaro snorts at him, arching his brows. "Spears?"

"I just want something to practice being a warrior with!" Van says defensively. "Spears are cheap, right?"

The elder blacksmith's apprentice shakes his head, looking amused, and then thinks about it. "Actually," Jaro says slowly. "I might have something. If you're alright with the shoddy quality, I think we have some practice pieces left?"

He goes to rummage in the back of the smithy and comes back with three very rough looking spearheads made of pretty low quality iron, going by the little holes and pockmarks in them.

[Dull Spearhead, Lvl. 1] [Attack: 3] [Defence: 0] [Crafting material. Attach to a Wooden Pole for a Dull Spear Lvl. 1.]

Van studies the spearheads with interest. Huh. There was crafting in Age of Tales, of course - but the only weapons you could craft were different types of arrows, and those only if you played a Ranger. He'd never seen spearheads. Maybe with some crafting material, his crafting menu will unlock?

In the meanwhile, the younger apprentice has abandoned his nail and is coming to join them. "Jaro, did you make these?" Denny asks, poking at the spearheads interestedly.

"Yes - master was hoping to get commission from the Baron, so he had me learn how to make them," Jaro shrugs. "We didn't get the job, though, it went to a blacksmith in Elysia. Someone's relative." He rolls his eyes.

Denny bounces eagerly, looking up at him. "I want to learn how to make spearheads!"

"Figure out how to make straight nails first," Jaro snorts, pushing the kid back towards the anvil he'd abandoned. Then the elder apprentice turns to look at Van. "Anyway, you can have these for five silver apiece."

Van hums. They are pretty rough, but… they'll probably still be better than the tools back at the farm. "Throw in a sharpening stone and you got yourself a deal."

-

Things go a little better at the tailor. Emphasis on the little.

"Oh, dear me," huffs the very fashionable lady tailor holding the gambeson against Van's chest and tutting fretfully. "No, it won't do, this won't fit at all! I'm afraid it will never fit you."

[Tailor] [Alma Arbury] [lvl. 7 Commoner]

She's somewhere between her thirties and forties and quite pretty, as most female NPCs in this game are. She's dressed up like the NPCs in the crown city, in a multilayered, vaguely Victorian looking dress with many shiny buttons running in a neat line from her neck down to the very hem. She looks very much like someone who's well fit to catering for the rich and affluent.

It's pretty fascinating, since she wasn't in the game at all.

"Well?" Alma asks, squinting a little through her golden framed glasses.

Van looks down. Though the gambeson looks pretty legit, with thick quilting and metal clasps and everything… it also kind of looks like she's holding something made for a child, when compared to his torso. "Could you maybe… expand it?" he asks hopefully. 

"Oh, well," Alma frowns, leaning back a little to consider the issue. "I suppose I could add panels to the side… and the arms… and the shoulder…" she trails away and then tsks, folding the gambeson over her arm. "No, no, it won't do, it won't do at all, it would be a complete mess. No, the proper thing to do is to make a new coat from scratch. Yes, it will fit you perfectly and will be far less work for me!"

Van hums, watching her take the gambeson away. "Well, you're the tailor, I guess. How long would that take, though?" he asks worriedly.

Alma hums and waves a dismissive hand. "Oh, a day or two - it's not a terribly complicated piece of clothing to make, and I have some nice quilt ready."

Van sighs with disappointment. Yet another unexpected turn for realism, but at least it's better than a week or two. "I see," he says and mentally pokes at the System, in hopes that it might offer him a handy-dandy instant goods store.

It shows him the tailor's shop instead. 

[Madam Arbury's Boutique.]

[Handkerchief - 80 copper pieces] [Foot Wrap - 90 copper pieces] [Underwear - 1 silver pieces] …

And so on and so forth, all the way down to…

… [Men's Fancy Winter Coat - 67 copper pieces] [Fancy Evening Dress - 80 silver pieces] [Elaborate Wedding Dress - 1 gold and 10 silver pieces] 

Van mentally flicks through the store page with a sigh and then stops. What's this? Near the middle of the list there is, oh, is that A Leather Vest, lvl. 4? For meagre 20 silver pieces? Well-well-well…

He looks slyly towards the tailor. "You wouldn't happen to have anything else - like, say, a vest?" he asks and adds, leadingly. "Something that might offer a little bit of protection?"

"Oh, well," Alma huffs, adjusting her glasses, her lips pursing up in thought. "I suppose we can have a look at what I have in store, but I really don't think… no, maybe…"

She heads off, muttering to herself and leaving Van examining the boutique and the System's store window. 

It's interesting, and yet another proof of how much more… real things are here. While the building for this shop was in the game - and it had something like five identical clones in other towns and cities - it hadn't been something the player could interact with. Just window dressing, making towns feel more lived in.

Maybe it was in the cut content, and there'd been plans for a clothing shop NPC that hadn't been implemented. It wouldn't be the first time it happened, and there certainly were enough clothing items that there should've been a tailor NPC.

"Ah, here we go!" Alma calls. She's holding a brown leather vest up triumphantly. "Now, this, this is a tough piece of clothing, if I do say so myself! Nice and supple cowhide. Come here, let's see how it fits."

It doesn't, no matter how Alma tries to stretch it, the vest doesn't get anywhere near to closing properly. Van's chest is simply too big.

"Well, that's what you get for growing so big!" the tailor says, a little defensive, her face flushed with effort. 

"I didn't say anything?" Van mutters and then shakes his head, giving in to the inevitable and taking the vest off. Everything was so much easier in the game - because everything always fit the character perfectly. "I guess it was a bit much expect clothing to be ready made. Let's talk about the gambeson - how much would it cost to make it?"

Pretty much all the silver he has left, it turns it, and he wouldn't get the gambeson until the next time he was in town, but that's fine. He wouldn't need it until after the Rift, anyway. With haggling done - and belated introductions made - Alma moves to take his measurements

It's a bit of a new experience for Katie, who's never had anything tailored in her life. It's also somewhat eye-opening, because Madam Arbury's Boutique has something he's not encountered yet. 

A mirror.

"I'll get to work right away," Alma promises, pushing her glasses up again while Van stares at his reflection. "It will be ready by tomorrow evening, mark my words. Please extend your arm straight to the side."

"I'm sure it will be," Van says, tilting his head this way and that while holding his arm to the side. Katie spent something like two hours designing this face, but seeing it like this, in the mirror, moving when he moves, emoting when he does…

"May I ask what you need a gambeson for, anyway?" Alma asks. "I assume you work on a farm?"

"Yeah, the Gylcross farm - but I'm not planning to stay there forever," Van admits, making faces at his reflection. His teeth are so straight. And so white. Kind of weird.

"Ah, I see," Alma hums, thoughtful, writing something down in a little notebook. "Are you looking to join any military group in particular? Should I add heraldries?"

"No," Van says, shaking his head. "I just want some armour, no insignia or heraldry or anything."

"Very well. You can put your hand down now."

Van lowers his arm and tilts his head the other way. Damn, his jaw is… impressive. He's got comic book superhero levels of jaw going for himself. Which kind of makes sense - a certain farmboy superhero might've been an inspiration there, maybe. His hair is so much messier than he realised, though. Guess that's an effect of it not being just a thing made of polygons anymore.

Also, is that… a bit of stubble? A hint of a five o'clock shadow? 

Does he have to shave?

Alma finishes taking his measurements with professional finesse. Van pays for his order, signs the receipt,  weighs his now empty coin purse and then sighs. "Thank you very much, Ma'am."

"And thank you for your business, Mr. Van," Alma says, sniffing, and with a last slightly flustered glance at him, awkwardly waves him off. "Have a very good day now."

Shaking his head, Van heads out of the store.

So, instead of the usual armament of Long Sword, Reinforced Wooden Buckler, Studded Leather Armour, dozens of Draughts of Memory and bunch of healing potions on top of it, his shopping haul is… three shoddy spear points, sharpening stone and a receipt for an order from Madam Arbury's Boutique.

Yeah, Katie's usual approach to Age of Tales is not working here, at all, and reality is throwing some spanners in the works. Katie isn't sure how she likes it. Which is probably kinda ironic, after all the times she went on and on about how dumb and unrealistic Age of Tales was. 

She'd get used to it. 

-

"Ah, there you are, my boy," Mr. Gylcross says, spotting Van loitering about the marketplace, waiting for him. "Have you been enjoying your time in town?"

"It's been… interesting," Van admits, which it has. "All done with business, sir?"

"Yes, quite. I found a couple of buyers for our spring crops," Mr. Gylcross says, seeming satisfied. He's got a flushed look of a man who's had at least a couple of drinks and his moustache has somehow gotten bushier. Looks like he's had a good day. "And the doctor will come take a look at Geruth tomorrow," the landowner continues. "Now, go and fetch the cart, if you please - I've made some purchases, and it will be far easier to load them directly into the cart."

[Homeward bound, Lvl. 2.]

[Mr. Gylcross' shopping trip is drawing to a close and it's time to head back to the farm. Fetch Bell and the cart, and load Mr. Gylcross' purchases for the trip home.] [Quest reward:  20 exp, 3 Meat buns, 1 Bottle of Mead.]

"Right away," Van agrees and gets to it.

Together with Mr. Gylcross Van loads up the various sacks and barrels and other things the man had bought onto the cart, tying them down for a secure trip home. Then Mr. Gylcross takes a seat in the back again, now leaning against some flour sacks.

"Have you eaten anything, Van?" the man asks, rifling through his purchases.

"Ah, no, sir, I got… distracted," Van admits - and the moment it's mentioned, he realises that he's actually pretty hungry and thirsty. He hadn't even been thinking of food as something he needs, because, well… Age of Tales didn't have a hunger bar.

"Here," Mr. Gylcross says and hands him a clay bottle and a paper bag that doesn't quite fit the setting. "Eat up, my boy, it's a long way home."

"Thanks, Mr. Gylcross," Van says and peers into the bag - sure enough, meat buns. The bottle must be mead then. "I appreciate it."

"Got to keep my men fed, don't I, else you might run off to work for the likes of Drakner, and I can't have that " Mr. Gylcross chortles and settles down for the journey back.

Van hums, taking a bite of the meat bun and answering the System's prompt for [Start journey?] with [yes].

-

[<<Prologue | <Chapter 3 || Chapter 5>>]

Proofread by @nimadge

-

Reality is against Van but at least there's meat buns and mead

[mindblownie2]

after finally watching a playthrough of Quarantine, my thoughts:

PROS:

I'm glad we are still walking around town and interacting with people on the streets, since some early interviews made it seem like that won't be the case

I love the mechanic of pointing a gun at people to make them halt and then running away, it feels very tense and also realistic that you can intimidate them to buy time but they can still stab you in the back when you turn around, but at the same time maybe you don't want to just murder everyone on sight... That was good I liked that.

Affecting the state of things in town with the decrees is also cool, great potential for agonizing over choosing from two bad decisions and getting yourself screwed over with unforeseen consequences and so on

Eva is wearing clothes again yaaay congratulations IPL you did it

Speaking of Eva I also love coming back to her at the end of the day and talking with her, bouncing ideas off of her but also getting to know her better, it's something I've always liked to imagine happening but was only in the realm of headcanon until now. Also the more they bond the more devastating her death will be and I love pain <3

I think the dialogues were decent and a good gradient of asshole to kind-hearted to choose from

The POV switching is interesting too!

Oh I also saw that only once in the letsplay I watched, but it seemed like maxing out apathy resulted in this film reel filter and I liked that on like, a symbolic level? Idk something something surrendering your agency and just going through the motions like a character on screen rather than taking active decisions to affect events

CONS:

I can already tell I'm gonna be so sick of Yakov Little. Surely there were less grating ways to incorporate a tutorial. Especially with the nonlinear framing, say a flashback to Daniil being a student and being instructed how to do a diagnosis?

While on paper I think replacing the survival stats with the mental state slider is cool, I really don't think it's well executed. The bar fills up way too fast, so you have to deal with it almost constantly, which is just distracting, like how often you're breaking up whatever you're doing to open the inventory to eat some drugs is just annoying, and stuff like kicking a trashcan so you don't kill yourself is just so unserious. I think it would have been better if getting too far or spending too much time in either extreme would affect the tone of your dialogue or the availability of quests or certain actions, but not prevent you from playing. This way it could be a trade off, neglect your wellbeing to achieve something and then deal with the consequences, or a way to explore different facets of your character, or affect the course of the story. Maybe the game could keep track of some points you accrue by maxing out apathy/mania, and this could affect the ending, like maybe you unlock a wild swing reckless decision with mania points, or end up with The Suicide Ending if you have too much apathy (and preserve the impact of something like that happening, because if you can shoot yourself at any point when your extremely fast depression counter runs out, it is going to very quickly lose meaning or emotional effect and become just an annoyance). And if they don't tweak it that will suck because it's like, the biggest new thing about the game and has the potential to make or break the experience for me

This is a smaller thing but I had a viscerally hateful reaction to how Barbie doll beauty influencer looking Serafima's face is. Game devs look at real women challenge. At least the glasses cover it up a little bit

THINGS I'M ON THE FENCE ABOUT

I think the diagnosis mechanic is an interesting novelty, but it does take a lot of time, especially when having to go across town to investigate the patient's house, and I'm a little worried it might get boring/a chore if you have to do it too much and it takes away from other plot points. I do like how it serves to flesh out random NPC's though, makes the townsfolk feel so much more alive and real, especially in comparison with how cardboard cutout everyone felt to me in P2

The capital/Thanatica... Man idk. Some of those bits were cool, some details I liked less, and I still feel like I preferred to have it all left to my imagination, but I guess it could've been worse...

The burning woman apparition was scary (which is good) and I like the theory that it's a hallucination from seeing the bone stake lot incident, if that's true I'm glad we're finally acknowledging how traumatising this must've been to witness, but I feel like any mechanic of fighting her kinda cheapens it. Should be just something you maybe briefly see in bonfires and question your sanity rather than a monster chase, imo.

The whole time travel bit, I'm still curious but also wary of how well it will be executed, guess we'll see.

[gamerdog1]

Devil May Cry Review

Last year, I adopted my little PS2 from a Value Village. I lovingly took it home, gave it a gentle bath, and spent at least a dozen hours carefully swabbing it's insides of dust. All this, so I can get the experience of playing popular and longstanding game franchises, like God of War, and Metal Gear Solid, where they began. The things we do for love, I guess.

Since then, I've been on a bit of a side-quest in life, sort of. A quest to discover why popular pieces of media got so popular, by experiencing them first-hand. I have this drive to learn about what is beloved, to join in the fun of fandom with others, and so when I saw a lot of fanart of white haired brothers with magic swords, I got curious. One thing led to another, and after many, many hours, I have some thoughts.

Devil May Cry, for the PS2, is a very interesting case. For one, its the accidental sister to Resident Evil, as it was originally intended to be the third installment in that franchise during development. Yet the two could not be more different, in terms of gameplay style, visuals, and execution as a whole.

Where Resident Evil is all about forcing the player into difficult situations , Devil May Cry feels a little more lax. Resident Evil makes the player slowly take in the atmosphere, learn about the lore, and use their knowledge of the map to their advantage, while Devil May Cry prioritizes snappy combat over exploration and puzzle-solving.

The focus on combat is what everything in DMC revolves around, for better or for worse. There's a variety of visually interesting moves you can pull off, and more to unlock by trading in currency gotten by killing enemy monsters. More upgrades means more cool moves, means more interesting combat, and more ways to tackle bosses.

At times, though, the complexity of the combat system left me feeling overwhelmed. This is one of the few games where I had to read the manual in order to play, as there isn't any tutorial, and combat can be punishing in early stages if you aren't fully familiar with Dante's moves.

Even after learning the ins and outs of the controls and combat, I still got my ass handed to me by the first boss, and every one after that. Each one felt like a massive hurdle, and forced me to really learn how they worked in order to even stand a chance. In the moment, I was frustrated, but looking back now, I haven't had to work this hard with a boss in years. Spending hours sitting on my couch, going over the attack patterns, it was almost meditative (if not for the occasional shouts of expletives here and there on my part).

Devil May Cry, as a whole, isn't incredibly difficult, as long as you know what you're doing. The game is about figuring out your enemies' weaknesses and the best ways to exploit them, not just rushing in and hoping you'll live. Figuring this out is the first challenge, the second is the underwater controls.

Apart from gameplay itself, DMC is pretty interesting. The gothic architecture is a bit of a far cry from Resident Evil, but carries over it's grim tone and atmosphere. Colors are muted, music is oppressive and heavy, and everything lends to this feeling of grandness and fantasy. It really makes the player character stand out, which is great when you're getting ambushed by ice lizards, or something equally monstrous, in one of the many grand halls.

This review also wouldn't be complete without talking about the main character, who is a delight to be around. Honestly, Dante is the reason I picked up this game, and the reason I kept coming back to it, even after countless GAME OVER's. His snarky attitude, stylish coat, and cockiness make him a fun character to see interact with others and his surroundings, and really help him stand out from the holier-than-thou demons he faces. He's always got something to say, isn't afraid to speak his mind, and just wants to have fun, and really, who can blame him?

The story of the game, though, left a bit to be desired. Yes, its epic, and gets better in the second half of the game, but for a while, the game felt aimless. Why do I need to get these magic items, to unlock these doors, to do these tasks the game sets as mission objectives? In most games, they usually directly tie into what the player character is doing, and help facilitate a progression of story. For example, when Jill finds Richard in RE1, and has to get him an antidote before he dies, its not just a fetch quest; it teases the snake boss, establishes Richard as a character in the game's world, and depending on whether or not you save him, it affects future gameplay.

In DMC, though, each mission feels like homework, an assignment to do before a deadline or else. Sure, its a good way to show players the next objective, and as a neurodivergent person I love having clear and concise instructions, but it kills the mood. I never felt like I was exploring the castle, discovering new things and furthering the plot. It felt like I had a to-do list from the game devs, full of tasks that rarely were related to the plot, and usually just meant 'go here, get the thing, bring it somewhere else'. It would've been nice if the quests explicitly furthered the plot, but at least they told me where to go.

Don't get me wrong: I don't hate this game. I actually liked it, but there were lots of issues I had with it that soured my experience. Unforgiving bosses, overly complicated controls, and a lack of story immersion made me feel like this game was an experiment with this style of gameplay on Capcom's part. If this had a bit more polish, or maybe a tutorial, I might try playing on a higher difficulty. For now, though, I'm excited to see what's new in the sequel. I've heard its... rather infamous. Exciting.

[monriatitans]

MonriaTitans

Let's Play Some $#!7!: Glorious Companions - Part 2 | Let's (try to) finish the demo!

Come join me for another installment of Let's Play Some $#!7 | LPS$, where I play games to provide commentary to educate on game development! Provided I don't get too caught up in the game to comment, which, in a sense, is commentary in and of itself.

Today, tried to finish playing Glorious Companions' demo! It was, initially, played in Let's Play Some Demos! - Part 6, but I had to cut it short so the video didn't get to 4 hours long.

Now, I didn't call this a Let's Play Some Demos! | LPSD video because I want this game and I had planned to have it be a regular feature on the show. I changed my mind while playing it today; I don't think I can make it entertaining to watch live. I'm considering making it its own video series, though, like I did with Super Lesbian Animal RPG | SLARPG.

And if you came here from Twitch, thank you! I don't know why the stream suddenly cut, but I ALWAYS record my streams in case things like that happen!

With all that out of the way, here are my opinions:

I love the game so far, even though it frustrates me. I have no sense of direction, so more guidance towards quests would be nice. Or a better legend on the map. Now, I'm willing to admit if I've missed something. I did have to find the Tutorials for a reminder of how to turn the camera, which may or may not have caused my headache.

With the stream cutting, it left me unable to find out more about the game, like, how to equip items other than armor to the company. Are bandages and food only to be used while camping? I might have figured out the humanoid figures on the map are possible quest markers; I used them to find the packs of wolves and herds of deer I needed to hunt, and, sometimes, I would be where a figure was and wouldn't see what I needed to find. Again, I'm open to the fact I missed something. It had been 2 weeks and 5 days since I last played and I didn't think until I started playing to go over the tutorials again. Derp.

I am thankful for the bit of muscle memory I had left, which a well-crafted game is able to help establish. I may have forgotten what certain abilities did, but I didn't forget how to give orders to a company member or to fight in general. Well done there!

And someone in the chat pointed out the game looked good, and I agree! Although, I am concerned with how it doesn't help with my lack of sense of direction. Again, more guidance is needed to know where one needs to go when grabbing a quest. If I missed something, oops.

It's a great game that I don't feel like I did a lot of justice by playing. It looks great and it was my forgetting how to do things that added to it being frustrating to play. I'm also concerned about why the stream cut and the game began to lag. Are they the same cause?

And one last thing I forgot to mention is the fact the game is in Early Access and it has been since 2019. That's 5 years. Which explains why it looks and plays so well. If you look at the store page, it has Mixed reviews, in terms of positive and negative feedback. They're taking the feedback seriously, I would say. Bravo!

And that's it for this mini-review! Thank you for reading! If this series of videos is something you're interested in, you can watch it on YouTube, The Titans' Discord, Steam, Rumble, and Odysee! Don't forget to hit the Subscribe and/or Follow buttons to know when there's more!

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The Sunday, November 24th, and 648th, Artist Shout-Out goes to Ken Bishop! Check them out here!

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TIMESTAMPS 0:00 - Starting Soon 9:56 - Welcome Gamers! 12:17 - Artist Shout-Out/Alt Text Generator 18:26 - Glorious Companions 1:15:51 - Address the Stream Cut/Glorious Companions 1:19:54 - Let's Play Some Demos! | LPSD Announcement 1:22:00 - Artist Shout-Out 1:26:55 - Thank You!/Just Chatting 1:29:12 - Rendezvous Point Bookshop Plug 1:32:23 - Farewell

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MORE INFO & TO SUPPORT - MonriaTitans | WGS Summarized - Rendezvous Point Bookshop - Artist Shout-Out Criteria - The Titans' Discord - Throne Wishlist - #SubOffTwitch - YouTube - Rumble - Odysee - Twitch - Steam

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Originally published to https://opinionsandtruth.wordpress.com on November 24, 2024.

[derkastellan]

Quick tour of the Gold Box games (Part 1)

So, given how much time I spent on the Gold Box games lately, I wanted to share some notes on the games, maybe also some relevant bits.

Pool of Radiance

Overall style: Mega Dungeon and Sandbox.

Overland Map: Traverse on grid, random and hidden locations

Quirk: Extensive level scaling which ups the challenge, especially in the beginning.

How does it fit in the line: This is probably the hardest title until the very end of the series. You find your bearings with the engine, its quirks, how the spells work, you have to sort out effective combat tactics. And then you're set. It's a great intro to both the Gold Box line and AD&D, but it surely does not tutorialize you. At. All.

Variety: You get the feeling of visiting many varied locations, some quests/sites have a different feel, some missions bypass the focus on combat. They crammed a lot into this one. Due to the limitations of the early engine you still feel like you battled a lot of the same enemies, over and over, and in waves. Still, many challenging set piece encounters that break the mold.

Notable NPC: Cadorna the Traitor.

What I think: See this article.

What can we learn from it: Healthy mix of environments. All missions lead to the end goal, but not all derive from the same big bad. Good, explorable individual locations. How to vary the same enemies into evolving encounters that keep challenging you. And it really did a good one on backtracking - more of that would have done the series good.

What it could have done better: Give a tutorial or intro to the game, or guide you at the start. Maybe. Sometimes figuring stuff out the hard way is also very rewarding.

Curse of the Azure Bonds

Overall style: Separate locations, spanning multiple maps each (episodic).

Overland Map: Point crawl. Mid-game, additional optional locations become available to explore.

Quirk: Cameo by Elminster... if you happen to know him.

How does it fit in the line: Curse of the Azure Bonds feels like a sequel. It is not as tight as POR, nor as focused. It evolves the engine somewhat. You get a bit of a feel for the politics / conflicts south of the Moon Sea.

Variety: Yes, there are many varied locations, but to me most of them don't have much flair. Dracandros' tower and the thieves' guild / sewers at the beginning seem most memorable in terms of dungeon design. Definitely a lot more variety in enemies. It has a damn beholder - probably one of the most complex monsters in the whole line.

Notable NPC: Dragonbait, the saurial paladin whose emotions you can smell. (Nacacia, my ass!) He's on the cover, too.

What I think: COTAB feels a bit weak compared to POR. It starts a trend in Gold Box games' dungeon design - you can enter a lot of rooms in a non-linear way, but most of them feature just unrewarding combat you may skip. And you want to skip lots of it, really. Most of the game I don't remember, having played it one week ago. In POR, set piece encounter rooms often featured some reward - a clue, a story, a piece of gear, needed money and XP. You often had to do many of them, anyway, might as well tie them up in a good way. Not in COTAB - they just feel so skippable! And while you may spend your sweet time exploring optional stuff and could do the middle part in any order, the game rubs a recommended order in your face, so it narrowly escapes feeling linear after all. (The illusion wears thin but holds, I guess.)

What can we learn from it: COTAB tries its best to keep the point crawl lively by tying stories to each leg of the journey, and tries to avoid being too repetitive by making routes previously traversed safe.

What it could have done better: While it works for COTAB, the idea of "the GM can do things to me" bonds is... highly questionable. The party suffers "consequences" for things they never intended to do and had no chance to avoid - and for example gets banished from a whole country. In the context of a CRPG that's no big deal. But in your campaign, this could suck big time.

Gateway to the Savage Frontier

Overall style: Separate locations, spanning typically a single map each (episodic).

Overland Map: Huge map. And yet almost completely unused except for conveying amount of travel needed - there's only one location you visit which isn't a city and it is in the most obvious place imaginable.

Quirk: We're the heroes, and we're gonna walk into every house in town. Oh look! We surprised some spies!

How does it fit in the line: As a game Gateway seems considerably less complex, it feels almost like a tutorial to the other games. You spend considerably less time on each location, making each feel even less memorable than COTAB locations. Given the restrictions of character import/export you should play Gateway right after COTAB. Could of course be considered its own line.

Variety: Quite a bit, it reuses a lot of stuff all over. You don't spend enough time anywhere to let it bore you, anyway.

Notable NPC: Krevish, the harmless-looking fighter. He actually has quite some useful stuff to say over the course of the game.

What I think: This is the tutorial for gold box games you never got. The game is easier, features difficulty controls. It is actually fun in its own way but also rather simple - it's essentially a MacGuffin hunt with some clues, and if you fail to decipher the clues, you can traverse the map and ask a friend. A super quirky sage friend.

What can we learn from it: Gateway, by virtue of having a big map, helps us envision the sheer size of the frontier. Different regions of the map have matching encounter tables - something you quickly learn if you travel through the Troll Moors...

What it could have done better: Gateway should have utilized that map better, placing locations in the wilderness you need to look for. Instead it opted to place practically all its crawling in cities - and adding some "cities" / "dungeons" off the world map on islands. In comparison, POR's overland map was smaller and more condensed, and yet there was plenty of original content to discover, including randomly placed monster lairs. What seems bizarre are all these city maps that double as explorable dungeons, so you get attacked by barbarians or stirges on your way to the inn.

Secret of the Silver Blades

Overall style: Mega Dungeon all the way.

Overland Map: None. Instead you have a central teleport hub you can use to avoid traversing the huge ass dungeon over and over. Only Gold Box title without an overland map, and it shows.

Quirk: Enormous plot convenience with a wishing well oracle that can generate riddle answers for money and has teleporters wherever you need them to break the game into manageable chunks.

How does it fit in the line: Even at the time, I read a review of the game that was rather dismissive and biased me against it. It is, in a sense, the most linear of the games. On the other hand, it broke the mold in making all these maps that were not simple 16 x 16 grids but huge-ass sprawling and branching dungeons to explore and map out by hand.

Variety: The game sends you through a sequence of locations - ruins, mine, dungeon, glacier/frost giant village, boss castle. Each area is themed. It sticks to its themes well, and yet that makes it feel less varied, somehow.

Notable NPC: Vala, the original plate mail bikini girl. To complement her picture (eyes up here, buddy!) you get a combat icon that shows a lot of mid riff. No wonder she takes way more damage than my (overleveled) party!

What I think: This game shows the importance of imagination in early computer RPGs. It might have fared better and distracted better from its linearity if these locations featured in a modern remake in third person or 3D style. But by lacking any overland map and you returning to this village for resupplying the game feels smaller than it is. It actually took me the most time to beat due to its sheer size. And it still feels like you're nowhere, getting nowhere. They tried to break the mold on this one, but psychologically they failed. You need to manage your players' perceptions, too.

What can we learn from it: Most people probably would get bored of the same Mega Dungeon sooner or later, no matter how much variety you contrive for it. (Leaving "Diablo" aside, an entirely different gameplay experience.) It's not that they failed to try for variety, they really tried, it's just the psychology of the whole thing. Which tells us that in RPGs, the setting matters a lot. If you feel cramped into this tiny nowhere psychologically, the actual total size of the combat maps doesn't matter much. The story feels terribly local and limited through the way it is told. The game itself is massive.

What it could have done better: Lots, actually! - Combining size with lots of random encounters is rather tiresome! I kept lowering the difficulty to finish combats faster and since the manual said it lowered the likelihood of encounters. - The game treats giants as regular encounters, making you wade through hill, fire, frost, and cloud giants like they are a nuisance. By the end, even three Ancient Red Dragons at once become a mere blip on the difficulty curve. This shows us rather neatly why even AD&D 2e did a rebalancing there. If ancient dragons feel like somewhat challenging enemies, then it reduces the sense of adventure. - The game massively relies on a particular sort of enemies in mid- and end-game: Monsters with flesh-to-stone gazes. If you don't have mirrors, this is basically a save-or-die encounter and winning initiative is extremely important. If you have mirrors and equip them in time, it trivializes a lot of encounters instead. It's rather satisfying to turn a medusa to stone, though. (The Gold Box games do not consider the penalties, I think, for fighting while averting your gaze.) Most sought item in the game: Reflective magic silver shield - total: 1. Save-or-die needed to go away and won't be missed. 5e does this much better. - Iron golems suck big time.

[corinne-eaglebridge-sso]

I personally really like it, and think it's worth it (though I do recommend that if you buy lifetime, you do it when a double starcoins deal or a discount deal is ongoing), but I am a player who has been here for almost a decade now (4 of which as a paying member) and has sso as a special interest, so I might be biased.

The storyline is decent, but has its flaws. Sometimes it can be a bit cheesy, but, as far as I remember, not immersion-breakingly so. In terms of characters, some are memorable, some not as much - which is which really depends on the player themselves, imo. Some people get invested, some don't.

The map and horses are great! They are still working on renewing certain areas, but the updates they do are not just graphics updates, but complete overhauls. The character customization has also been greatly improved and diversified by the character model update, and there's a lot more clothing and tack styles to chose from now.

I think there's some gameplay in a lot of categories - some grindy, some pretty quick one-and-dones, some that take you a short while, some that can last you a pretty long while (and still be useful to maintain even after you've unlocked everything on it).

I don't think SSO is very childish, although the tutorial can be a bit frustrating and slow-going, and the starting quests in Moorland do still suffer a bit from their age. A lot of early dayblockers have been removed, though, which should allow you to progress through the early game faster. (Which I suppose is good, since they now give you 3 days of free starrider when you make your account)

The sso community can be frustrating and overwhelmingly negative depending on platform; a lot of people who hate what the game has become now, mainly in a graphics sense (personally I like to call them nostalgiafuckers, but y'know), but in my opinion ssoblr is one of the better communities out there.

I don't engage a lot with in-game chat, so I can't tell you much about that.

I do agree that it can be limiting as a free player, but I think that was intended - the freeplay aspect is more like a demo rather than a full non-paying experience.

TLDR: There's good sides and bad sides, but I think in the end, it's worth it, and one of the best horse games out there right now. I'd say, try the free 3 days of starrider, and if after that you're interested, get starrider while there's a good deal going on (the normal bundle + tack deals aren't worth it, but subscription discounts and double starcoins are).

what are y’all’s honest opinions of sso? i’ve been looking for fun multiplayer horse games that aren’t cheap cash grabs or patronizingly childish. i tried sso a couple times but just couldn’t get into it, it felt so limited with what you could do as a free player and didn’t give me enough to figure out if its worth spending money on.

i’m not fond of subscriptions, i’m of the “buy the game once and it’s yours” mindset. but $80 is a lot to spend on something that i can’t even tell if it’s worth paying for at all, let alone nearly a hundred dollars.

[tippenfunkaport]

Inspired by a recent poll, could you tell us a bit more about the software you use for writing and the advantages with it?

Thanks so much!

Can I keep this short is the question...

So, for anyone who didn’t see the post this is referring to, I mentioned on another post that the writing software I use is...

4TheWords for drafting (brainstorming, first draft, etc)

Scrivener for all subsequent stages (editing, formatting, etc)

ProWritingAid for a final look before I submit / post

Longer version (and, like, I could talk about this all day so feel free to ask follow ups but I will try to contain myself)

4TheWords is a fantasy RPG-ish writing game where the words you write defeat monsters, earn loot, complete quests, etc. I have been playing it for five years ish and the game-ification just works really well for my brain. Earning silly little prizes and moving the game plot along keeps me motivated to keep writing when otherwise I would be a useless slug so I do most of my early stage writing on there like drafting, brainstorming, journaling, etc. It is silly but I love it and it basically saved my writing life when I was in a huge slump so they have my undying devotion. The company is also the kind you feel very good about supporting and they are HUGELY queer friendly with a big yearly Pride event with many of the main in-game characters being queer and/or trans. (The closest the game has to main characters are a lesbian couple that just got married as part of the Valentine's Day event last month!)

It costs money but a) there is a 30 day free trial of you want to check it out and b) there is a community pool if you cannot afford the fee as well as frequent sales/deals. (If anyone wants to try it out, feel free to use my referral code when you sign up because then you’ll get some extra crystals and I can send you a welcome present of some loot! If the image link above is annoying, dm me and I will give you it via text for copy and paste.)

Scrivener is very robust writing software that I use for fiction, non-fiction and scriptwriting. I only rarely use it for first drafts (bc I use 4TW for that) but I do almost all my editing / rewriting / formatting / publishing in it. I have been using it for probably about a decade and am still finding new tools and features I didn’t realize it had. I absolutely swear by it. The learning curve can be steep but luckily it’s one of the most popular writing programs in the world so there are a TON of great tutorials out there. (My advice? Just watch a video of something like the top 5-10 features and then play around and look up stuff as you have questions instead of trying to do the whole long tutorial it comes with.)

Disclaimer that I only own the desktop version. There are mobile versions that are a separate purchase from the desktop version but I don't use them.

Biggest selling points of Scrivener to me are:

while many writing services have a monthly fee, Scrivener is purchased exactly once and you can use it for life on your laptop and desktop AND you can get 50% off that one time price with a NaNoWriMo winner code (this alone is enough to buy my loyalty for life)

it’s incredibly versatile for both plotting and publishing and works really for my writing process (which is, admittedly, chaotic and weird) and has near infinite customization. It's esp great for making story bibles, organizing research, and plotting out larger works with lots of cross references and chapters you need to rearrange

as a script writer, Scrivener only cost me a one time fee of $35 and includes all updates and bug fixes until the next major version (which happens like once a decade). FinalDraft is $250 and that only includes the current version (which changes about once a year) to do the same thing. That’s a no brainer to me.

ProWritingAid is editing software. Like Grammarly but MUCH more robust with a lot more reports you can run. It’s not replacement for a human editor (AI editing can only do so much) but I like it as a second pair of eyes before I post or submit something because it does catch a lot of the basics and makes me feel a little better about sending something out. There is a limited free version and the full version can be pricey if you pay the monthly fee but I bided my time until the lifetime subscription went on sale for 50% off and paid once and now I have it to use for life.

There. That was almost short, right?

[xb-squaredx]

Tears of the Kingdom Review: Building a Better Sequel

Breath of the Wild was a massively successful entry in Nintendo’s acclaimed Legend of Zelda series. It sailed past the best-selling installments, and served as both a swan song for the ill-fated Wii U console, and the first breath of life for the Switch, which has become a massive success in its own right. BOTW wasn’t just considered to be a great Zelda game, but it served to redefine how open world games could be made, and its effects on the industry are being felt to this day. A sequel seemed inevitable, but even so, many questioned if Nintendo could make lightning strike twice. After six long years of waiting, Tears of the Kingdom is here…and it makes BOTW look like a tech demo.

UPHEAVING THE FAMILIAR

One of the biggest obstacles Nintendo likely faced in development was finding a way to make the world of Hyrule fresh again, despite largely using the same map from BOTW. Their answer is The Upheaval. TOTK opens with Link and Zelda investigating the source of a strange, toxic substance seeping out from deep below Hyrule Castle. The Gloom sickens and weakens anyone that touches it, and eventually they see the source is a decayed, withered body held in place by a strange, glowing arm. Soon enough the body stirs and a torrent of Gloom is unleashed on Hyrule. The Master Sword (and most of Link’s right arm) is destroyed, Hyrule Castle is suspended high in the air and Zelda vanishes after being engulfed by a strange light. In the aftermath Link finds himself on a floating island, one of many now dotting Hyrule’s skies, with the mysterious arm having replaced his corrupted one, and with it he has two goals: stopping the strange figure and finding Zelda.

The structure of TOTK is largely the same as the predecessor, being almost completely open after players complete a lengthy tutorial. For what it’s worth, I find this game’s story a bit more interesting than BOTW, but TOTK still inherits some of that game’s issues when it comes to narrative. When you have a game where 90% of the plot is both optional and can be done in any order, it can be difficult to make things impactful and coherent. As a result, the Zelda team arrived at a solution that is understandable, but a bit grating after a point. Most main missions are largely written as if they could be the player’s FIRST main mission after the tutorial, and the end result is a lot of repetition as the same exposition dump is given to players multiple times over the entire playthrough.

Similar to BOTW, the juiciest bits of this game’s narrative are found in the past. Link can find memories hidden away all over Hyrule, which largely explains the bulk of the game’s backstory concerning the ancient Zonai, a race of beings that were there at Hyrule’s founding but are strangely absent in the present day. This is also how we primarily get the main villain, this game’s incarnation of Ganondorf, fleshed out. As a result of the game’s commitment to nonlinearity it’s possible to skip all of the set up and arrive at the conclusion without any of the build-up, which happened to me. Suddenly I know of the game’s biggest twist and the answer to the game’s main driving question, which made any subsequent plot moment lose a lot of impact. While the game is often very good at acknowledging sequence breaks with certain quests, it was a bit annoying that the game continued to play coy despite having laid out the main answer to me so early on. Admittedly, that won’t be everyone’s experience, but that was a big issue for me that held the narrative back a bit. Well that and some bad audio mixing. It would have been nice to actually hear the sparsely used voice acting over the often booming music!

I do appreciate that this game’s overall tone is a lot more optimistic and focused on unity compared to BOTW’s almost crushing loneliness, serving to give TOTK its own identity. Link has plenty of allies right from the get-go this time around, with a base of operations near Hyrule Castle that slowly expands as the game goes on. It’s pretty rewarding to see the races of Hyrule join together, at least after you help them with their own issues Ganondorf’s revival has caused. As with the previous game, the overall art direction is also fantastic, making for some breathtaking vistas at times. As much as the Switch is really showing its age, the technical aspects of this game are proof that specs aren’t everything. Being able to load up this massive world with almost seamless navigation and juggling of physics objects is nothing short of astounding considering the Switch is little more than an outdated tablet at this point, and it manages to be at a mostly stable 30 FPS, making a marked improvement from BOTW. While I have my misgivings with some of the narrative structure, I was immediately pulled in and think the game has a great start, but there’s plenty to sink your teeth into, as I’ll demonstrate.

TIERS OF THE KINGDOM

BOTW was already a gigantic game, but TOTK pushes to somehow stuff in even more. Broadly speaking, we can look at three different tiers of the kingdom (heh), each with their own distinct feel and gameplay loop. Starting with the sky, there’s this calm, almost ethereal feeling to most of the sky islands found in this game. The Great Sky Island that players start out on definitely paints a good picture of what to expect as they continue exploring…however I found that the sky was far and away the most lacking part of the game’s world.

The Sky Islands are both lacking in size and frequency, a criticism that also plagued Skyward Sword from back in the Wii era. The Great Sky Island really set me up for disappointment, when most other sky structures are barely a fraction of its size and start to feel same-y after a point. You pop up into the sky, find a shrine, maybe a treasure chest…and then you’re done. Only rarely can you find somewhat larger, more interesting structures, but they’re surrounded by a TON of empty space. To a degree this is probably intentional. If the entire skyline was filled with floating islands it wouldn’t look very good from the surface, so having some room to breathe makes sense aesthetically. There’s also the fact that making sure the islands are more spaced out naturally makes it harder to get to them. You end the tutorial without your paraglider, and early in the game your stamina won’t hold out long enough to sail through the massive gaps in the sky to reach another island. That way, there’s this sense of mystery and anticipation when finding the next destination in the sky. I would look up at massive sky labyrinths or floating spheres and wonder both what was in there…but also how I’d even get up there. Even so, the fact that some sky islands are so small you can’t even really spot them on a zoomed-out map is a step too far. I’m shocked at how much they were played up in marketing when they barely factored into my total playtime.

Thankfully, there’s a lot more to this game. The surface is where the bulk of the game’s focus on community really comes into play. You have all the different villages and regions to explore, and it’s where the bulk of vendors and quests will be. Without Guardians roaming around, you notice a LOT more NPCs just out and about in Hyrule, and it was a welcome contrast to the other tiers and their relative isolation. Be it checking in on the latest gossip at stables, or getting my fashion on at Hateno Village, there was always something to do. The bulk of the game’s Shrines of Light are also found here, giving players quick, isolated puzzles that slowly drip feed health and stamina upgrades. Even if you want to go visit the sky, you’re basically required to return to the surface in search of new ways to get up high, such as the Skyview Towers invented by Purah and Robbie. These not only fill in your Purah Pad’s map, but also catapult you high into the air, giving you the chance to reach certain sky islands, or get a different perspective as you plot where to go next. But sometimes you might notice some strange areas on the surface that require…deeper examination.

All over Hyrule players can find massive chasms that are surrounded by Gloom, but if you’re brave enough to head down one you’ll find one of the game’s biggest secrets…the Depths. A gargantuan subterranean region, I found the Depths to be a very interesting inversion of the game’s normal environments in more ways than one. For starters, compared to the boundless freedom found in the surface and the sky, you have to take it slow and steady underground. Most of the Depths are pitch black, and you never know what is lurking just beyond the shadows. Link will either have to use special seeds to create temporary light, or seek out Lightroots that can illuminate larger chunks of the map permanently. Unlike when you use the Skyview Towers to map out the sky and surface, Lightroots only illuminate a small radius around them, causing me to slowly work from root to root, occasionally being sidetracked by various treasures and structures to explore. Eventually, I noticed that Lightroots connect to the Shrines of Light found on the surface and suddenly it all came together: the Depths are just an inverted surface. Every mountain becomes a massive, deep valley. Every body of water turns into an impenetrable wall. Similar to the sky, players will have to leave the depths and find another way back down in order to get to certain areas, but even more than that…being in the Depths for so long can be fatal. Gloom is much more concentrated down in the Depths, and enemies are also infected with it. Taking damage from Gloom goes a step further and effectively “breaks” your heart gauge, requiring special meals made from Sundelion flowers found mostly on the sky in order to heal, that or natural light from the surface or Lightroots. As dangerous as the depths are though, they’re the main source of Zonaite, a special ore that will be incredibly handy when using the wide range of Zonai technology found throughout the game.

THE FUN OF CHEATING

The Skeikiah Slate from BOTW is no more, but Link has arguably better powers to work with this time around with the help of his nifty new arm. During the tutorial, players gain four main powers from the Zonai to help on his adventure and it doesn’t take long to realize that Link is so powerful now that you’re basically playing with cheat codes.

The first and likely most important power is Ultrahand. At first glance it seems like a reskin of Magnesis, letting you pick up and move objects, though this time you aren’t limited to metal. But the real kicker here is the ability to combine objects together with…basically magical glue. Take some wooden boards and glue them together, attach some wheels and BAM…you have a makeshift cart. Or you can use one of the many different ancient Zonai devices by attaching them to a wide variety of things for almost limitless possibilities. Zonai devices often look like modern-day technology, even running off of a battery of sorts that Link can upgrade as he goes through the game. Fans, flamethrowers, steering wheels…the list goes on. Some devices are just strewn about all over the game, but in the sky specifically you can find…basically gatcha machines that dispense TONS of devices in capsule form that you can store and use later on when you need them. What’s more, later in the game you can find the Autobuild power that allows you to save “recipes” of various constructions, and then assemble them quickly, being able to use zonaite if you’re short some parts. What I like about this power is that you can be as simple or as complicated as you want. You COULD just glue some logs together as a makeshift raft…or you could go out of your way to make something far more intricate. For players that’d rather not mess with the ability entirely…while the game is built with it in mind, you can still get by for most of the game without worrying about it as much. Autobuild especially helps cut down on the time spent building things as a really great upgrade too. The entire game could have easily been built around this concept alone, but we still have other powers to cover.

Fuse is effectively a combat-centric take on Ultrahand. Using Fuse, Link can take almost any object and glue it to his weapons. I can put a Zonai spring on a shield, or glue a sword to my sword. I can even put a chunk of meat on my arrowhead if I’m so inclined. Nearly every object or material in the game can be fused to your arsenal, with a variety of great effects that can make weapons stronger, more durable, or given extra attributes. As an early example, I fused a mine cart to my shield, turning my shield into a skateboard that let me grind on rails like I’m in some Sonic game. Getting elemental weapons is as easy as attaching a special fruit or ore to my weapon, and those are way easier to find than elemental weapons ever were in BOTW. Your arrows are also much more versatile now; attach an enemy’s eyeball to an arrow to make it home in on targets, or a bright bloom seed to light up the Depths from afar. Fuse allows even the weakest of weapons to be useful, which is something that just wasn’t possible in BOTW. I can take a stick and fuse a rock to it to make a makeshift hammer that’s great for breaking open ore deposits or brittle walls, so no more stockpiling rare hammer weapons or waiting on my bomb runes to recharge. It also goes a long way towards making battles more worthwhile to even do, as enemies drop horns and claws that can grant HUGE strength increases to weapons. Before, in BOTW I would eventually avoid fighting late-game enemies because they were too beefy to deal with, as you’d lose multiple weapons in the process and any weapons they dropped weren’t as good. It was a net loss. But now even fighting silver enemies isn’t that bad, since that means I can put that silver moblin horn on some middling spear I found and suddenly that is among my strongest weapons. I have my own qualms about combat in general in this game, but Fuse goes a long way towards making it more fun to experiment and stick with than ever before.

Ascend admittedly is a step down in application, but is still quite good. The fact that it was initially a dev tool should be telling enough. With Ascend, Link can jump up through any ceiling and pop out on top of the structure. Sometimes this is just as simple as going up a floor in a house, or being able to explore a deep, expansive cave and then use Ascend to leave, popping out at the very top of the mountain you found the cave in. In the depths there are even some rare structures that lead all the way back up to the surface that Link can use Ascend on. It honestly breaks traditional level design and so the game had to do a lot of careful restructuring to manage but even then with some application of your other powers, it can be pretty easy to Ascend past areas you’re meant to go through normally. But nothing compares to the power of Recall.

Initially, I thought Recall was a very situational puzzle solver. You aim at an object and can rewind it back roughly 30 seconds or so, but further applications showed that it might be the most broken of the lot. Recall has much more range than any other power, and can affect virtually anything you could also use Ultrahand or Fuse on. I’ve had instances where I’ve built a glider, only to go off course or miss my mark, and I would use Recall as basically a reset button to bring it back to a better position. Enemies dying and leaving their valuable collectibles falling off a cliff can be saved with a button press. What’s more, any movement you did with Ultrahand will be replicated with Recall, so I’ve done that to get vehicles aligned or to rise up platforms I would then Ascend onto to get up high. I’ve even completely broken shrine puzzles with Recall, nullifying any challenge they might have otherwise posed. Some might get a kick out of it, but I felt I kind of optimized the fun out of puzzles to a degree. Regardless, these powers are a lot of fun to mess with and even more versatile than BOTW’s power set was. But while we’re kind of bringing up a negative…I may as well get a bit more critical.

TEARS OF THE FANBOY

I want to stress that, despite my complaints here or there, I adored this game and just DEVOURED it over the last month or so. I put over 245 hours into it, doing almost everything of value. Playing the game for long stretches and having it basically absorb an entire month of my life…I’ll be the first to admit my own experiences and annoyances won’t be shared by many, and for normal people that just play in smaller bursts and don’t care about full completion, they likely won’t have nearly as many issues as I did. But…spending that much time with any one game is going to reveal some of the cracks in it, and those did chip away at my enjoyment a bit.

TOTK is a complex game, with a ton of things the player can do at any given moment, but I do think that Nintendo went a bit too hard on filling this game up with actions you can perform, and then realized they ran out of buttons on the controller along the way. Simply put, some actions are far more cumbersome than they should be. Selecting materials to use, either to throw or attach to arrows is tedious. You hold Up on the D-Pad, then use the right stick to find the item you want, but seeing as there are dozens upon dozens of materials you can use throughout the game, eventually that list becomes harder and harder to parse, leading to a lot of wasted time scrolling to find the exact item you need. You can hit Y to sort by different parameters, but if want you want isn’t near the front, then prepare to spend several seconds scrolling down to find it. A “favorites” option would have been a godsend here; just let me label a handful of items for quick reference. Throwing materials is also awkward, having to first throw your weapon, but then selecting an item with Up on the D-Pad as well. While I appreciate having more options for arrows and the like, the elegance of quickly swapping between arrow types in BOTW is missed here.

Speaking of direct comparisons between these two games…let’s talk Sage Powers. Compared to the Champion Powers from BOTW, these are a massive downgrade in both strength and usability. In TOTK if I want to use a Sage’s ability I have to manually walk over to them and ready them with the A button, then usually hit A again to actually use it. In the heat of the moment having to chase down my AI companions gets old fast, and then aside from that there’s the fact that the A button is already pretty multi-contextual as it is. I’ve had tons of experiences mashing A to grab items on the ground, only for Tulin or Yunobo to walk in front of me and have me accidentally activate their power and blow items away. Looking at the four powers in depth, while they have their uses they’re rarely worth the hassle of using them. Sidon’s water shield and attack is very niche, as ice attacks can do the same things as water, with the added benefit of freezing targets. Riju’s lightning arrows take forever to set up, and aiming Yunobo’s fire spin can be tedious. Tulin is about the only Sage that feels well designed, as more often than not I will always have him around to give me a boost of horizontal movement while gliding. I don’t have to worry about tracking him down, or the A button doing something else most of the time. On the ground though, he has the same issues. I enjoy having the Sages around as AI partners to take some of the heat off of fights, but compared to how simple and effective the Champion Powers were in BOTW, all mapped to different buttons and being next to impossible to accidentally do…it’s pretty disappointing.

There are other things to go over too, some of which already existed as problems in BOTW. Just as in the previous game, climbing wet surfaces is torture. TOTK introduces some solutions but they feel poorly implemented. Players can now make tonics that grant “slip resistance” to climb up wet surfaces more easily…but in practice you’ll barely notice the effects. There’s also an armor set that is said to make you immune to slipping entirely, but that is locked behind a quest chain that can take a while to complete…and then once you get the full set you realize that you need to upgrade all three pieces two times to actually unlock the hidden set bonus to make you completely slip immune. On that same note…upgrading armor is still incredibly tedious, especially when it comes to dealing with any pieces you need from dragons. Horses are also still pretty pointless to use after a point. Without even getting into the fact that they can’t be used in huge chunks of the map, like sandy deserts or rocky mountains, not to mention the sky islands or Depths…being able to build vehicles with Ultrahand basically replaces their only real function as transportation. And yet for whatever reason, whistling for your horse is still mapped onto the D-pad. In a game where they’re clearly hurting for more buttons having one relegated to something I barely even considered using is pretty bad.

I have plenty of issues with combat in the game as well. I know Zelda isn’t a series where action is the main event, but even so the action is typically satisfying in its own way. I’d best describe it as tedious here; enemies are damage sponges, your own attacks send them far away and force you to track them down, and after a certain point the difficulty curve falls apart. I know difficulty is subjective, but both BOTW and TOTK are very strange about balance. The beginning of the game is the hardest, as you have almost nothing. But once you stockpile some meals to heal, armor to up your defense, and materials for fusion the game can’t really do anything to you. I once thought Gleeoks or Lynels were to be avoided, but getting my hands on enough Keese eyeballs to make homing arrows means I can stun them easily and melt through their health as they lay down defenseless. Mastering the parry and perfect dodge also eliminates most options enemies can even do to you. But admittedly, not everyone IS always going to be perfectly prepared for any given fight, or know that certain abilities can just render some enemies a joke. I can tell that balancing a game that is so nonlinear and open-ended is no easy task, but I do think they made players a BIT too strong at points and hope later games can find a better balance. But overall, that’ll mostly do it on the nitpicks.

CONCLUSION

When I beat BOTW, I had wished I could play it through again with my memories wiped, just so I could experience it all again for the first time. Tears of the Kingdom is arguably the next best thing. A twist on something familiar, with some curveballs thrown in for good measure. Link’s new abilities do a lot to spice up how you interact with the world, and there have been some noticeable improvements to the original’s issues, even if some still remain. With this likely being the future of the franchise, at least for now, I’m interested in seeing what lessons Nintendo can take from these two entries. For my money, Nintendo has managed to iterate on one of my favorite games out there and have made it hard to go back. I’m hard pressed to think of too many things BOTW did better, outside of the novelty of being the first game in this new style. I liken BOTW’s strength to being the joy of discovery, the appeal of exploring the unknown. While there are elements of that in TOTK, this time around the focus is on experimentation. Like the joys of playing with a tub of random Lego pieces, being able to adapt to any solution with whatever you have around, bending and breaking the rules of the game world, the end result is unrivaled freedom and depth that will keep people busy well until the next main Zelda.

Until next time,

-B

[anneapocalypse]

Mark Darrah's Memories and Lessons from Dragon Age: Origins

Former BioWare developer and Executive Producer Mark Darrah talks about the development of Dragon Age: Origins.

Summary below the cut!

Dragon Age: Origins was always conceived as the spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate.

It changed engines several times, starting out on the Neverwinter Nights engine before being merged with Tag. It bounced back and forth between having and not having multiplayer.

The franchise was without a name for a long time while the first game was in development. The name was chosen essentially by compiling lists of fantasy words and smashing them together until "Dragon Age" was chosen. Darrah feels that Dragon Age isn't a perfect name, but it gets the job done.

There weren't actually dragons in the game before the name "Dragon Age" was chosen. The game was effectively "retrofitted" to the name. The archdemon was originally conceived as more of an angel kind of figure (and there's some early concept art in the video that looks more like how Corypheus and the Architect ended being designed).

"Origins are an interesting and troublesome feature," says Darrah, because they "allow you to establish a view upon the world depending on which origin you choose," and they add replay value to the game. From a development perspective though, they are "a bit of a nightmare" because you have to build six different tutorial levels. Tutorials have to be done very late in the process and have a big job of onboarding the player, so they're very labor-intensive. From a perspective of efficiency, multiple origins are not a great idea, but sometimes a "bad idea" ends up being the thing that sets your game apart.

Darrah came over to Origins mid-development after Revolver was canceled.

There was originally an Avvar origin that began in the Korcari Wilds, which was cut from the game before Darrah came to it. Two origins for each playable race was the original plan.

Darrah talks about how when a cut is made, it doesn't necessarily cut the same amount of development resources as it cuts content for the player. The more resources different parts of the game share, the less impact cuts have on development time. By the time he came to Origins, there was very little left that could be cut.

He feels that Orzammar has the most distinctly "Dragon Age" art direction, whereas the rest of the game have a very generic fantasy aesthetic.

Darrah prefers to think of "dark fantasy" as fantasy that deals with darker themes, not simply fantasy that has sex and blood. He thinks that the Dragon Age games have been moving gradually from low dark fantasy to more high epic fantasy.

He cites "Broken Circle" and "Lost in Dreams" as a part of the game that got unintentionally stretched out because the original concept was just the idea of arriving at the tower, and then entering the Fade, without considering what would be in the tower itself. "Luke" [Kristjanson?] then wrote the content that would actually fill the tower, but that additional length to the quest hadn't been considered when it was first considered, so the quest became a lot longer. He also points out that as the mage origin expanded to use more of the tower, "Broken Circle" was affected as well as that was more tower space that needed to be filled.

He cites the Fade as an example of how you need to be careful, when you're building a party-based game, when you decide to take the party away and make the player character fight alone, and some players won't be equipped for them. Expectations may need to be set early if some things are going to be taken away from the player later.

By the time Darrah took over, the story had been written and re-written, and the content mostly just needed to be finished.

He thinks that the job of porting the game to consoles in the late stages of development allowed them an opportunity to get one last good look and re-evaluate things. A longer post-production could probably benefit a lot of games, but he doesn't think that's likely to happen broadly in the industry.

One of the things he's proud of on Origins is how well the project controlled its bugs along the way rather than having a ballooning bug list at the end

He talks about Warden's Quest, a 24-hour play session they ran during Alpha in London, which the player who made it the furthest in 24 hours won a cash prize. There was also a very intense press tour in Europe.

The marketing for Origins really played up the Wardens as the coolest thing ever, and this caused some apparent confusion or disappointment with Dragon Age II when the protagonist was not a Warden. He says that "People market well," meaning that centering the marketing around some kind of image of the playable character tends to be effective, but it can also have its own problems, like giving people the mistaken impression that the player character is more static than they actually are.

EA was used to using up-and-coming pop music artists in their properties when Dragon Age: Origins was coming out, hence the Marilyn Manson trailer and the 30 Seconds to Mars end credits song.

The Shale add-on "The Stone Prisoner" was originally part of something called "Project Ten Dollars," in which an otherwise $10 DLC would come free as a download with a one-time code included with a new copy of the game. This would effectively devalue a used copy of the game by that $10. There was a lot of PR backlash to this tactic, with people believing that the add-on content had been cut from the game purely so that it could be additionally monetized. This wasn't actually true, as Shale had been cut for time limitations by the time the game was completed, but was able to be finished as an add-on before the game shipped. Project Ten Dollars ultimately generated such negative PR that EA discontinued it. Darrah says it was a clever idea, but "if the audience rejects your clever idea, it's not such a clever idea, is it?"

Awakening was in development while the base game was being ported to consoles. It sold well because it had a strong retail presence as an expansion pack and came out not too long after the base game. Expansion packs with a retail presence marketed like a full game (asAwakeningwas) have mostly disappeared.

With the success of the Mass Effect Trilogy remaster, a lot of people have wondered about a remaster of the Dragon Age games. Darrah distinguishes between a remake, which actually affects content, and a remaster, which updates aesthetic aspects of the game like graphics. He thinks a remake is unlikely forDragon Age: Origins,which might require a lot of changes to make it more palatable to present sensibilities; a remaster, on the other hand, could conceivably happen, and any such project would probably end up bringing DA2 along with it. A remaster of Inquisition would be pretty minimal work, since as Darrah points out, it still looks pretty good if you turn all the settings up.

Darrah also talks about his tendency to want to bring balance to a situation, and how he's learned that this can actually polarize a disagreement further by making people feel that they're not being heard. He hopes he's grown out of this habit by now and learned to listen first and let people know they're being heard. In game development, it's important to be able to communicate with people who express things in different ways.

Regarding the next Dragon Age game: Darrah says he sees a lot of similarities to Origins. The project has been in development for a long time and has seen several changes in direction and in leadership. He says he's confident in the team, that no game is the product of one individual's vision but about the collective creativity of a team, and that there is still a team with experience in the IP and a continuity of vision. He also feels that EA learned certain lessons from projects like Mass Effect: Andromeda and Anthem. He encourages fans not to be worried about the game just because any one specific person isn't on it.

[doe-chatters]

Okay so Update post Natlan Quest -

(spoilers for that ahead! I'll try to keep it to a minimum but be aware!)

I have since thought a LOT about this game and what it does and doesn't do great. And I say this with all the love in my heart! Because I really do love this game and the story. So I'll just reiterate my points and add things.

I have nothing bad to say about the music score except that I wish some titles were longer because they're all so delightful, and especially in special areas with a very notable score where you spend a lot of time (like Neuvillette's office, The fortress of meropide, Nathan's stadium) it can and does get a little repetitive. In the overworld and while exploring they do this really well though.

Nothing at all to add about the scenery. It's grand, it's breathtaking, it's beautiful, I wanna roll in it, please and thank you.

The story is ramping up, and it's clear with Natlan's quest. Now that you're properly involved in the world themes are getting heavier and more emotionally charged, situations more fraught and grand with every main quest. Then again, all of them feel like the world is about to fall apart when you come in, but Natlan did add a cherry on top I feel. The visual effects and story beats were absolutely delightful and the combination of effects mostly used in manga, with the usually great animation in high stakes moments really added to it. Buuuut on the flip side, as for the lore itself, genshin keeps sort of half-committing to things. There are suddenly angels (why? where is biblical lore coming from? Having Seelöwe also be lost souls but like, idk, ascended ones or some shit would have been fine) and - maybe I missed something but Xilonen saying she will die forging our ancient name - suddenly doesn't die. Which I don't mind but listen, I was stressing out about this since the moment it was revealed and then nothing happened about it. It's a bit the thing I've said before where they will commit to a plot or some piece of lore but then don't have the courage to leave the player guessing long enough so it really pays off, and instead reveals a plot twist too early to be really satisfying. It's not bad! But it sometimes is a little anticlimactic when it could have been very satisfying.

Once you figure out how to actually play and especially figure out how to fight in this game, it is incredibly fun and rewarding. Which leads me exactly to my point. Boss fights are epic and rewarding in a way I've seen very few games accomplish. I don't think there's ever been a game where I was so excited for boss fights. And a new boss fight on top of that. I usually hate figuring out how to get through a hard boss but genshin makes it so fun. There will be new gameplay mechanics introduced for each boss, which is great at not making them feel repetitive and really helps make every battle feel like it's a unique experience. Buuuut that does give me great frustration sometimes - and that ties into my next point - genshin is horrible at tutorials. Really just abysmal. I am an avid tutorial-reader and -player. I spent as much time in botw in the tutorial area as others spend on the whole game (no I'm not kidding, yes I spent a full 60 hours on the plateau, shh we don't have to talk about it). But! I cannot and will not read tutorials the game gives me, mostly because they're useless in helping me figure out how anything works. They sometimes leave out important explanations, they try to be short and concise but still end up confusing, and even the pictures they are really don't help most of the time. I've started fully disregarding them and it has honestly been easier that way. Which is not how tutorials are supposed to work. So to my earlier point. There will be new mechanics introduced during boss battles, I will be incredibly confused on what the hell I'm supposed to do and in the middle of a big battle with heightened emotions this has brought me great frustration. To be fair, the mechanics are usually not extremely complicated or complex and do add to the gameplay in a positive way, and I do figure them out in a timely matter, but not after swearing at my screen and asking it what the fuck it wants of me. Now I'm no expert, but my suggestion? There is usually smaller fights leading up to the big battle, just add the same mechanics (with a differnt look so it still is a surprise later on) to let the player test it out in a slightly more chill environment. Then make it bigger and grander for the finale with more effects, etc., and let the player go wild with something they're at least a little familiar with already.

I'll only make a quick point to the voice acting since I don't have much to say about that, besides that I changed my mind about Paimon. I like her voice much better, and especially during a big battle, her voice acting was really good, and really added to the story for me. The only sad thing was some of my more favourite characters in natlan not having a voice at all (which I think is due to the strikes with the parent company of where the VA's work, so all blame to whatever company that is lol). But the voicelines that were there were fun and really added to the story, especially with the minimal expression changes in the characters. Which brings me to my next and last point.

Character design! Now this one's... a personal interest of mine and let's say, a double edged sword. The character design in genshin is both very good and very bad - I'll start with the bad. The characters models for playable characters are very boring and ignoring some minor changes almost all almost the same. The base models have little to no variations with three basic sizes and some height differences here and there, some small changes the torso but considering this is animated and these are sculpted models the changed are virtually none. There is no shape language, characters' base models are in no way visually distinct of each other, their flat stomachs, long legs and skinny arms always the same. And there's I think over 90 of them now. With (if we're generous) 5 base models. The thing of course, of this double edged sword, is that this is also the reason genshin's character design is so good. Because in order to have over 90 unique characters, and in order to have over 90 characters people want to spend money on, you have to make them visually distinct somehow. Which is done with their clothes, accessories, capes, hoods, hair, hats- you get the point. The game does an amazing job creating unique silhouettes. And by amazing I so good, that if I look at a blank silhouette of a character, I will know who it is. Out of every one of the 90 characters. That is shape language!! That is exactly what I was harping on about earlier. And that is a truly impressive feat with about 5 base models. The game does also show in various side characters that it is very well within their capabilities to create differnt models, granted not a ton of them, but there are more differnt models and body types than just the playable characters. And as a small side note, the even show in side characters that they are able to have coily hair textures and protective styles. This also does not translate to playable characters, not even from Natlan. This is all I will say about that. On a more lighter note, the colour palettes for the outfits and accessories are also incredibly well done. Somehow each character is unique, and they have still not run out of colour combinations that in combination with their outfits are new and fun and exciting. Also! Details. My god. Having drawn a few genshin characters, I really hesitate to do more because I cannot handle this level of detail with every single drawing. Making a model and puppeting it is slightly easier than drawing it by hand every time, but still, it is no easy feat and base models and body types aside I am truly impressed with their character design each and every time.

I know I don't really use this account anymore but I need to shout about it somewhere. Genshin impact y'all. Genshin impact.

The music score is absolute top tier not only in quality but also quantity. Almost 100 titles for Fontaine alone, and I probably am not even counting all areas of Fontaine. A unique fighting soundtrack for every region that somehow does not get old. Cinematic scores that to me are honestly big cinema worthy. Sometimes orchestral, sometimes more subdued, Inazuma Sumeru and Fontaine boss fights are what I think is rock? And it's so fun.

Scenery? This is the most obvious one but I will not discount it bc you will see previews and still images and go yes, this is nice actually. Very pretty and picturesque. And then you'll stand on a mountaintop looking at the sun set, see the colours change and know it looks completely different standing at the foot of the mountain and you couldn't decide which view is better while the colours shift from one delightful hue to another.

The story feels so full and it is clear how much it has evolved from mondstadt to Fontaine alone. And mondstadt was already fun! I enjoyed it, and it felt like a satisfying narrative. In fact, all of the areas I've explored have had extremely interesting and satisfying narratives that have drawn me in and made me want to know more. I personally am a fan of all things mystery, so I have been having a blast specifically in Sumeru and Fontaine, but Inazuma and Liyue were engaging and fun to play through as well. Really the only thing I would criticise is them not fully following through on the mystery. Both in Sumeru and Fontaine did they in my opinion reveal the truth a smidge too soon, and put scenes after where The Traveller is still trying to find out the mystery while you, the player already have gotten an extended cutscene. For example in Fontaine, Neuvilette and Furina's cutscene should come just after The Traveller and Furina's and not The Travellers in the middle. I think it would have been great to build a bit more tension and make the reveal hit even harder. And, I do understand why they did it in this way because narratively it does make sense like this too. I just like being hit in the face with realisation even more. I don't remember what exactly the scene in Sumeru was, but I remember thinking a similar thing, because they had built anticipation with hints and all these insinuations really well, but it did feel a bit like not following through, because all the way through you and your Traveller know the same amount, but suddenly they change that right before the end where The Traveller gets all the information anyways. But all in all as I've said. The stories are incredibly engaging and more than once ice found myself unable to stop at the time I wanted to because I need to know what happens next.

Boss fights. After having finished Tears of the Kingdom just before, I had been curious about the boss fights since Totk had been slightly lacking in that. Especially in Totk the boring thing was that every boss fight had pretty much the same lead-up and the same beats. Essentially it was the same fight in differnt clothes. Even Breath of the Wild had had more variety. So I was curious about how genshin would handle it. Divalin's two stages were fun if a bit hard to get the hang of, but I was optimistic and thought that if the next fight would just not be exactly the same, I would be fine. And the next boss fight in liyue was the coolest fucking thing. I had. So much fun in that. It did such a good job really making you feel as powerful as people kept telling you that you were. And it was very different! Inazumas and Sumerus boss fights were not my favourite but I think I had had my characters slightly underleveled for both. But they also were completely different! And uniquely fun and challenging.

The levelling system is incredibly complex considering how many characters you can and will have, there are multiple ways to level characters, weapons and the difficulty and rewards in-game which is just a fully wildass system that they somehow manage to implement so slowly that you can get your head around it by the time it's time to actually do something about it. How. And also why. There's already 84 characters and counting. I don't think I want to know how many weapons there actually are.

And also. This game is free. I have not paid a single cent and I've been able to do all of this. Fully for zero cents and zero euros. None. What the fuck. I would fully buy this game and with all of the included gameplay expect it to cost me a small fortune but I do not in fact have to. Because this game does not cost. Anything.

(Yes you can buy things and yes it is a gacha game. I am aware that they do in fact need a way to actually make money and this is it. But still. No one's forcing you to play a guessing game with real money. I have a decent amount of characters and as said, have not spent a single cent.)

[theeeveetamer]

If you've been wondering where I am: the answer is Zelda

I kind of want to do a quick comparison of what I think TotK did better (and worse) than BotW so here it is. I'm not finished with the plot yet so I won't be talking about the story, but I think I've played enough to make a comparison when it comes to gameplay and characterization.

No story spoilers or quest spoilers or anything. Just general discussion about the kinds of puzzle contents of dungeons and shrines and some of the features you can find in the overworld, but I'll put it under a cut anyway.

Starting with what I think TotK does worse than BotW so we can end on a positive note:

1) The shrines. I'm probably at least 50 shrines in at this point and I hate how they're all basically a variation of either a physics puzzle or a combat trial.

It's like the devs looked at how cool everyone thought Eventide Island was in BotW and said "do that, but again, and 20 times just to make sure it gets really stale." The physics puzzles are all really short and, by nature of the game's design, you have to put at least some Zonai devices used for the "intended solution" into the shrine itself so players can't get stuck. This means the game basically hands you the solution to every shrine right at the start.

If I could improve this game's design, I would just give players 99 of every Zonai device capsule while they're in the shrine that they can take out and use as they see fit (removed once you leave the shrine).

I don't mind some of the underpants trials or basic physics puzzles, but I'm dying for a more meaty experience that takes a bit of actual thought to solve. Speaking of...

2) The dungeons. Admittedly I've only done two so far (the Rito and Zora ones) but somehow I find them even easier than the BotW ones. At least the BOTW ones had the kind of neat mechanic where you can flip and move and rotate parts of the dungeon to open up new areas or do different things. So far the two TotK dungeons I've done have been more incredibly basic physics puzzles. The lead up to the dungeons themselves can be kind of neat but other than that, I'm craving something more complicated and time consuming. Like, something I'd be able to burn an entire play session on instead of just an hour or two.

3) The tutorial segment. It's literally just the Great Plateau 2: Electric Boogaloo, except this one is extremely on rails. There's a very obvious intended path you're supposed to be taking around the islands and there's really not much you can do to deviate from it, at least from my experience. Which I get; TotK has much more complicated mechanics to explain and naturally the more complicated a mechanic the more babying the player needs initially. I just think it was kind of a bad introduction to the game. It's at least two or three hours of extremely linear tutorial, the island isn't really even fully explorable since you don't get the paraglider until after you're done, and I wish they'd allowed a bit more freedom right off the bat.

4) This is kind of hard to explain, but I feel like in general the path to some key features are a bit more on rails than I would expect?

Just as an example from the early game: You jump down to mainland Hyrule and you still don't have a paraglider. You actually have to do parts of the main quest before you can even have access to it. Sure you can continue running around without it, but you won't be able to fill out your map AND you're functionally locked out of 65% of the map (since there's no way to get to the sky or the depths safely without it).

The game doesn't force you to go do the main quest either, and there's no indication that the main quest will be what gives you the paraglider or that you need the paraglider to activate the towers and get map pieces. I probably played for a good 7 or 8 hours before I finally gave in and looked up where to get it, which is kind of a shame because I was really not having that much fun until I hit the first Depths section. I wish they'd just given it to you when you finish the tutorial section or the first time you talk to Purah, instead of making you do a whole run around for it.

That's not the only aspect of the game that feels like that. E.g. you can't activate the Fairy Fountains until you go to one specific stable and start a quest line, or you can't get rewards for those spirit frog gems you keep picking up until you go to one specific place and start a quest line. Sorta takes the fun out of exploring and finding new things when you're basically told "oops, come back later I guess" when you find something cool. That said though, this is probably the least egregious of my complaints because it ties into something I think TotK actually did better.

5) The UI in some places is hot garbage, I'm sorry. Why do we not have different tabs for food, bugs, and monster parts at this point? It is a nightmare 100 hours in trying to organize your shit. Not to mention attaching something to your arrow lays out EVERYTHING in your inventory in one big long line that you have to scroll through, which means you might have to shuffle through a hundred different items to find the one you want. It should not take me 10+ minutes in the middle of combat to find a shock fruit to throw/attach to my arrow.

Now for the things I think TotK did better than BotW:

1) I actually think the quests are LEAGUES better than BotW. This is the reason why complaint #4 above doesn't bother me that much. For an example of what I'm talking about: the great fairy fountains have a quest tied to them specifically. Because of that you need to go to that one specific stable to start it. So it's more on-rails, but as a result you get a better and more involved side quest.

To be honest, I'm okay with the tradeoff (a little less freedom for a little more quality). I was really, really craving more quests on the level of Tarrey Town in BotW and pretty much every town I've visited in TotK has at least two or three semi-sizable quests to dig into. And there are far fewer "catch ten bugs for me" quests, thank god.

2) Overall the world just seems more lived in. The towns are bustling with activity and all of the NPCs have their own little schedules and problems and dialogue. You see a lot more travelers roaming around, and it's actually worthwhile to talk to them (I just found out yesterday that some will mark where you can find clothing sets on your map!). You can encounter travelers fighting monsters and merchants and whatnot.

BotW's big problem really was that there was like no one out and about when traveling, and you were pretty much always punished for talking to anyone because 95% of the time they turned out to be Yiga Clan.

3) The sky islands are kinda meh, but the depths are REALLY cool. Admittedly I haven't replayed BotW in a hot second so I'm not really bothered by them mostly recycling the main map, but I can see why that would bother some. However, I say the devs more than make up for it by essentially creating an entire second map below the surface. And kudos to them too, because it's genuinely unsettling and cool to be down there. I just wish there were more sky islands/more variety in the ones we do have. I mean like every region has one with a central wheel with a piston that you can spin to launch yourself, I've encountered like three moon ones, etc.

4) Maybe this is just me, but I felt like BotW strayed kind of far from previous Zelda games. I like that TotK has a lot of little references and easter eggs for players to find.

And it's not overbearing enough that a new player wouldn't be able to understand what's going on, but they're neat little things for the long time fans. Like I howled when I got the Windwaker PJs and I adore a lot of the visual references to Skyward Sword.

5) I still don't love weapon durability, but it is better this time. The fuse mechanic does make it so you can turn pretty much any crap weapon into something usable. This definitely gets me using my powerful weapons more often, whereas in BotW I would pretty much never grab two handed swords and I would cling to my powerful weapons like a hoarder.

I still wish there were a couple of unbreakable "bases" you could use and just the materials you attach would break, cuz it doesn't feel good to get something really cool and rare like the fierce deity sword and have it break.

6) I CAN BUILD A HOUSE!!! Also the customization in general is fantastic. I love that you can have different paraglider cloths and there's soooo much FASHION!

7) I found the guardians very unfun and I'm glad they're gone. I'm not a big fan of the big bad enemy that you either die to immediately or you take them out FAST. Encountering a guardian was always more stressful than fun for me.

I'm not sure if this was in BotW as well, but I notice that in TotK if something really strong hits you from full health you'll always survive with a quarter of a heart. Cuts down a lot on the unnecessary deaths and is a good indicator to players on what is and is not currently safe for them to take on.

And just in general there wasn't a lot of enjoyable strategy to the guardian fights for me. Meanwhile in TotK I've been taking on stuff waaaaaaaay above where I should be for hours now, and while it's hard/a bit frustrating sometimes it's very doable.

8) Link! I like TotK Link a lot better than BotW link. Maybe it's just me, but he feels so much more expressive and interesting. One of my big complaints about BotW was that Link was very flat, which stood out even more since they added voice acting. So characters would just talk at him like a brick wall. A bit jarring if you're coming off of Skyward Sword or Wind Waker link.

[zawadni]

Okay, everything I say in this is very basic information about the characters that you find out early in their route or you find out at some point while playing anyone else’s route. Nothing is a heavy spoiler that will ruin the story line.

Julien - sexy as fuck I know, but is a whiny bitch and almost all of the fandom can agree he is a bottom or/and submissive. Of course there are people who head cannon otherwise, and that’s okay. I haven’t played his entire route just cuz he isn’t my type personality wise, but basically he is a wanted man of Vesuvia and a plague doctor. He likes spending his time in bars getting drunk and has been known to be a bit of a bard! However he is INCREDIBLY BOOK SMART! Man can read and write which is really great for someone in this setting, is a doctor, and I think he is bilingual if I remember correctly. That might be a popular head cannon. He is a little flirty if I remember correctly!

Asra - magician, cute lamb dude with a pet snake, IS NOT AN INNOCENT LAMB THOUGH. Technically like the 707 or Mammon of the game and loves you in every route. The MC is his apprentice in every route. We often see him visiting the shop the two of you run for brief periods of time before leaving to a mysterious location on a mysterious quest again. Mischievous and romantic. I have played his entire route and I like it but his reversed end is creepy as hell-

Nadia - the countess. Boss bitch. She is a bad ass bitch but so fucking kind and empathetic at the same time. She actually cares about her people and married into the family, does not have any kids, prefers when the MC is direct with her instead of lying or beating around the bush. Loves to tease.

Muriel - MOUNTAIN OF A GENTLE GIANT OF A MAN! I REPEAT- GENTLE GIANT! Big buff awkward man who lives in the woods alone with his chickens and wolf. Very sweet. Very large. Standoffish and cold at first but he opens up to you. He is pretty shy and doesn’t like big crowds- he has an interesting back story though that I won’t get into here.

Lucio - the dead count of Vesuvia. His death is a little bit a part of the storyline for every route and there is a lot more to the story than you think. HE HAS TWO ADORABLE DOGS! I love his dogs. They are hunting dogs and are absolutely adorable. We see them most in his route and Nadia’s route but they make an appearance in every route, they are characters. He himself is arrogant, self centered, overly confident, thinks he is beloved but everyone kind of finds him annoying, and likes goats. He has good points and so far I like his route. He is very prideful. You might not like him in other people’s routes, you’re not supposed to as he is the antagonist, but I’ve found his route to be pretty interesting so far. I’m also a sucker for a man who loves his dogs- dude he treats his dogs better than anyone else. Yes, he is a ghost technically but again, there is a lot more to that story than you think there is.

Portia - best friend. Bubbly, flirty, and so much fun! She will prioritize you and protect you even if she is just Nadia’s favorite servant. Has a kitty named PeiPei! She loves to laugh and is very curious. She doesn’t mind getting into some mischief. Has a brother.

The Arcana story line it’s self is mostly a romantic tragedy. There are adorable and gorgeous CGs you can get and the paid options I HIGHLY recommend saving up for because I’ve found it to be so worth it. You can obviously go back and replay chapters to see paid options and get cgs I think it just costs a key or something.

The arcana is also mostly just story. There is the wheel you can spin daily where your either get coins or a trinket. Collect the trinkets to unlock 3 specific side stories. After you’ve gotten them all and played them all then you can start selling trinkets. You have to sell them in groups of 10 and every 10 gives you 50 coins.

There is the post card game. It’s a mini board game where you can collect post cards from your favorite characters. You get three plays per day and at most can get one post card per play. I always suggest picking what character you go for based on what character you’re able to get to on the first roll. Once you play the game you’ll understand it better, I’m pretty sure they give you a tutorial. If they don’t, watch someone else playing it on YouTube really quick, it’s not hard concept I am just bad at explaining it which is why I’m in even attempting to right now lol.

And there is the daily coins you get when your log in. Every 7 days, instead of coins you get a tarot reading (that you don’t have to use immediately) that can be performed by Asra, Nadia, or Julien. (The original three game characters)

To get keys, it should give you keys after a set amount of hours. However pretty often they find something to celebrate and will have days of infinite keys or giving us keys and coins. It’ll take a little while but I’ve found that it’s one of the more generous games.

If you’re want to know anything else, I will happily share.

thanks dude

[elevatorelevenhatesyou]

Final Fantasy 14 Part 3: Momodi Is Legit One Of The Reasons I Played This Game

Guh alright so New Game+ only starts at We Must Rebuild so let me find another video to steal from.

NPC man directs us to Momodi, and Momodi is immediately lovely and cute. I feel bad for people who start in Limsa or that other shithole. One thing that struck me about this game and made a great first impression was just how much character animation there is for NPCs in this game. People you talk to are always making gestures and emotes, and it goes a long way to making even nameless shopkeepers and town guards feel more like people and less like robots. Especially in comparison to that bastard World of Warcraft. Momodi has more charm and personality than World of Warcraft in its entirety.

Momodi lays out some backstory that was also explained in the movie that plays on the main menu but which I missed because it's only one of like three videos that play there. Something something Garlean empire tried to destroy the world and half succeeded, dragon god shit on everybody everything got fucked. This was called (Rucks voice) The Calamity, and it's been five years and everyone's still rebuilding. Since it was only five years ago it's a shame there wasn't any option to write some history for our own character, but Guild Wars 2 tried to do that and it was a bit of a mess so maybe it's for the better that the player's backstory is left to the imagination.

After talking about the great server shut down between the original game and A Realm Reborn, Momodi sends us to talk to some rude vendors, the fast travel thing, and your class trainer.

Here's that guy I mentioned who makes it very clear that fast travel stations and teleporting from anywhere you want to any fast travel station are things that are part of the setting and not just gameplay contrivance.

Another thing I liked was the history lessons guilds give you when you first talk to them. Every class is taught by a guild and every guild has an origin tied to the city and its past. The Archer Guild up in the forest city says they came about as an agreement between the hunters of the woods. The Marauder Guild down in the big port city talks about how Marauders used to be pirates and they used giant axes for chopping at ship masts when they were boarding someone. This is another nice touch that adds a lot of flavor to the world right away and makes each city feel more lived in and makes each class feel more a part of the setting and not just a gameplay abstraction. It makes sense for the Archers to come from Gridania and the Marauders to come from Limsa. I hope they don't fuck this up in Heavensward by having Lucia and a bunch of ground infantry with swords and shields be shown fighting against dragons who can fly even though Ishgard's entire army is supposed to be built around fighting dragons and this is what their high jumping Dragoons and gun-wielding Machinists are supposed to be for. But we get ahead of ourselves.

(They aren't even holding their shields properly)

This history stuff is the kind of information I think SHOULD be front loaded more than the deluge of game mechanics, because the mechanics are the important part we HAVE to learn, and learning is easier when spaced out a bit, whereas the history is not important but is interesting, so it provides a good breather. I feel like a simple combat tutorial would have been better suited this early since it's more exciting and is often something new players will be expecting to do. Then again combat is really boring this early on since you only have like two buttons to push, which is another problem, it shouldn't be so simple for so long, but that's gameplay talk again and I keep saying I'll rant about that some other time.

With that stuff out of the way, we're at the quest We Must Rebuild so okay NOW I can actually start taking screenshots from my own game. Next time. This week was really exhausting.

Don't make fun of my inventory, it's a free trial account, I can't hire retainers, leave me alone.

[collegiatitanica]

it may not heal it but it'll sure plug it for a hundred hours or so. The writing and voice acting is very, very good, and there are a lot of different ways to do things. The world is huge but doesn't feel that empty, and there is lots to explore and lots of people to talk to.

Some longer pros and cons under the cut (non-spoilery)

Cons:

Party & Inventory management is a bit annoying. You have 3 party members, but swapping them is a bit irritating as you have to go talk to them in camp and then talk to the person you want to replace them with (DA wins this). You can't access the inventory of non-party companions.

Not much tutorial. There are some things like non-lethal attacks or dispelling persisting spells that I had to look up externally.

Act 3 of 3 has a fair bit of cut content. It is still massive, but the ending is not great currently tho I have seen there are plans to restore this content.

One of the romances will trigger through innocuous seeming conversations with one of the male companions. You don't get locked into anything, but it's a bit annoying.

Autosaving is not very frequent.

No way to change your appearance after starting the game.

Pros:

Lots of companions! You can choose a premade backstory or make your own ala Divinity Original Sin 2, and the non-chosen premades become your party. There are 6 companions to start with, and you can get 1-3 more, depending on your choices.

Companions can die, leave, or murder you in your sleep due to your choices. They all have personal quests and they all tie in to the main quest as well.

Playing your own character doesn't feel like you're missing out on much content.

It is not only companions you can romance. There are at least 3 other characters you can sleep with, and could well be more, though these aren't anywhere near as deep.

It's easy to respec your characters or your party. Go up to an NPC in your camp and give them 100 gold and you can change your class, stats, and / or totally respec your entire build. You can have the companions do this too (though it may make some of their stories a little incongruous).

Combat is fun! It is hilarious to shove enemies into bottomless chasms, and there are lots of options and ways to play.

Tons of NPCs with unique dialogue that give you a good feel of the world.

There are lots of ways to complete quests. You can reach diplomatic solutions, steal things, sneak past enemies, or do a variety of different solutions. Quests can intersect and provide new solutions.

You can save at any time. In combat, in dialogue, when the screen is up to make a skill check roll.

Tons of clothing and armour options. Some gear you can acquire fairly early will still be good late-game.

One boss has a full on disney style villain song.

You can have a pet dog (who you can throw a ball to) and baby owlbear and you can pet them at any time. There is an achievement for patting them both at the same time:

will baldurs gate heal the hole in my heart left by dragon age or will i have to keep playing my batshit crazy zombie apolcaypse sims file for another ten years while i wait for dragon age 4.

[arnesia]

Hi! Hope you're well! So I see you post lots about morrowind. And I just installed the gane and I was wondering, would you kindly give some advice to a newbie to morrowind? Thanks!

okay, there’s a lot to say, and i might forget some stuff, or include stuff that’s not necessary, and it won’t be in any good order probably. but here goes:

first of all, i’d recommend you use openmw instead of the original engine. it fixes a lot of bugs, including some savefile corruption issues that can absolutely wreck your progress later on. plus, there’s some very slight graphical improvements, like the ability to play in widescreen and adjust the view distance beyond the original morrowind limits.

secondly, take your time with this game. take the time to speak with everybody, ask them a lot of questions, and read what they have to say. you’ll find more quests this way, but you’ll also learn more about the world you’re exploring, too.

walk most places to conserve your fatigue. your fatigue controls everything, like your hit chance and spell chance. the higher your fatigue, the better. so don’t go running ahead into danger and getting your ass kicked by a rat bc you ran out of fatigue. walk most places. 

if the slowness really bothers you, take the steed starsign. it’ll give you a +25 to your speed attribute, which will help out a lot early on. otherwise, i’d recommend you take the lady starsign, which gives you +25 endurance and personality. the endurance is really good for you, gives you a lot more starting health. if you want to ensure you hit things more often, take the warrior, which increases your attack, aka hit chance, by 10.

if you’re creating your own class, which i recommend, take either long blade or short blade (they’re the most diverse weapon types in the game), mysticism (for teleportation spells like interventions and mark and recall), alteration (for levitation, water walking, water breathing), and an armor skill of your choice. anything else is gravy, basically, and how you’ll make your character unique.

don’t worry too much about getting it just right the first time. the beginning of the game is pretty mercifully quick, unlike later titles. you can remake a couple times until you get something you like. warning, though: sneak kinda sucks in this game? the ai is weird about it. i’d recommend against using it in your first placethrough. go for a more warrior or battlemage approach.

give the ring you find in a barrel in the tutorial to fargoth. you’ll get better prices with arrille at his tradehouse in seyda neen. there’s some quests to do in seyda neen if you ask around, particularly one involving a missing tax collector. i’d recommend doing it for some cash.

once you meet caius in balmora, do what he says when he says to stop taking orders from him for a bit and join a guild. eventually you’ll get level-blocked, anyway, and it’s a good way to explore the world a bit and learn more about it. so go join the mages guild, fighters guild, or thieves guild. (don’t join the fighters guild AND the thieves guild, though. their storylines conflict heavily later on.) do some work for them, maybe consider joining one of the three great houses, hlaalu, redoran, or telvanni. consider them roughly analogous to thieves, fighters, and mages guilds respectively. you can only join one house, though, and the mages guild might conflict some with house telvanni. 

there’s also the imperial legion, imperial cult, morag tong (assassins guild, like the dark brotherhood but legal), and tribunal temple, but you needn’t worry about them too much. if you want to join, more power to you, but they’re not gonna be super necessary or involved, unlike the other factions. (i’ve also only done the morag tong out of them, so i can’t tell you much about the others. sorry)

killing in self-defense is perfectly legal in vvardenfell. if you need somebody to attack you first so you can kill them, taunt them into it through the persuasion menu in dialogue. it may take a while, though.

i can’t think of anything else, really. rest often. that’s about it. if you have any more questions, let me know!