#it’s just not the kinda thing i play i play like rpgs and i poorly play darkstalkers

[3lizab3t]

i watched some of the Insomniac Spider-Man 2 stuff with lizard and tbh it’s kinda just showing me that if i did get this game theres a good chance that i might not like it idk

[bryce-bucher]

Basidia Post #1

Introduction:

The Winds of Basidia is an adventure roleplaying game that I am co-developing alongside Modus Interactive. It's a sequel to his previous game The Snow of Basidia. Our main inspirations for this project include the n64 Zelda games, Fallout: New Vegas, Nausicaa, and Pathologic.

Tha Plot:

The kingdom of Basidia faces an apocalypse in the form of an extremely deadly, infectious basidium storm that is set to hit by the end of the next three days. Luckily, following an assassination of the king, the protagonist (a lowly nobody) chances upon an ancient artifact that was lost during the altercation. With this artifact they can relive the last three days of this beautiful, dying land over and over in order to try and find a way to save it.

Tha Factions & Misc. Basidia Politics:

There are three major factions in Basidia that are all trying to realize their own solution to the storm. Through their actions, the player can aid and join them on their respective quests. These factions include the Basidia Military, the Basidia Church, and the Rebellion (note: these are all working titles). The military and the church are in the process of fighting for primary control over the kingdom following the king's assassination. The military feel as though they have the majority of power and resources, so they should be able to take charge. On the other hand, the church feel as though they were second to the king in terms of closeness to God, so they have a right to be in charge. The military would prefer to just eliminate the church, but they cannot. The church is extremely important to the citizens of Basidia, and the military cannot risk losing that support. Operating in the background of this tension is a relatively small, organized anarchist-rebellion group. They were responsible for the king's assassination as a means to cause infighting in the kingdom. They operate through a horizontal hierarchical structure, and they are made up entirely of any Basidia citizens that believed in the cause. I'll leave it at that for now. Maybe I'll go into more detail with these factions and their motivations another time.

Tha Mechanics:

So this game is taking a while to develop due to how many interworking mechanics we need to build (as it turns out making a whole rpg is a lot of work). We want to emphasize player freedom (shocker ik), so we have to account for things like the player being able to kill whoever they want and go anywhere they want. This game has a timeloop, open-ended world, murder, infected areas, gliding, resource gathering, a weird marble lock system, a bomber's notebook type thing, etc. Maybe I should go into detail about the gliding since the game is kinda named after it. The player is going to be placed in a fairly vast world that takes a while to traverse on foot; however, as the game progresses the player will acquire various different types of gliders that they can equip and use. With these gliders the player can, well, glide freely to get around quicker, access new areas, and generally get more stuff done within the time limit. Sorry this section is poorly structured and rambely, but there are so many details I could go into for each mechanic that its probably best I just save a lot of it for individual development posts.

Conclusion:

There is a lot going on with this project, and I can't wait to share more of it. I'll see you next week when I probably talk about the marble lock system and/or the journal system that I am currently developing. Also go follow Modus and play Snow of Basidia if you haven't.

[invinciblerodent]

Honestly i want to start playing DAO and then go up by release from there till the new one cause it all looks so nice and enjoyable but i haven't even started and i keep hearing about the fandom being the worst of the worst and people actually got truamtized from it im genuinely scared... Im only so new to this gaming fandom thing it started with bg3 and sims 4 and stardew valley for me lol everytime i want to install DAO Tumblr shows me a post about the toxicity of the fandom like its fate herself trying to warn me not to go there lmao

Oh babe, don't worry, really!!!! I'm sorry if I made it sound bad earlier lol, it's... well, it's no worse than regular fandom drama I reckon, it's just the one I'm familiar with, and one that's been around a very, very, very long time. The kind of toxicity there is, I genuinely do not think it is any worse than any other fandom's, it's just kind of what happens to every petri dish if you leave it alone for ten years: turns into something of a meme. But if you follow nice people, and stay out of the tags (as is recommended for every fandom tbh), I don't think you have anything specific to worry about.

I'd be DELIGHTED to see more people feel inspired to pick up Origins, partly because I'm a huge believer of art preservation, and think that old games, old books, and old movies alike deserve to be seen/read/played and enjoyed- in part to be able to appreciate what we have now, in part to see where exactly we came from, and in part to see how things have changed. I think that kind of context is necessary for any meaningful commentary to exist.

DAO is an excellent game, despite what people may say- it's just like 15 years old. Naturally, over that time, it has started to show its age: jokes have aged poorly, mechanics feel dated, people and views have mutated and evolved (nobody is the same person in 2024 that they were in 2009, or at least I hope), and the surrounding social environment as well as the technology have changed drastically, to the point that what was once scandalous and a bold, daring move, now just feels dated, stuck in the past, or even offensive. Media that is already out there does not have the luxury of being able to change and adapt as time passes, and I think we need to keep that in mind.

(Edit: adding a paragraph here because the previous one sounded very apologetic and negative: the cinematics in particular still feel intimately real in DAO, its treatment of the ambient and the limited tools it had is still very immersive, and the writing is very strong. I also remember blushing my way through flirting with Leliana that the first time [as a closeted bi woman who hadn't even realized that she's bi at the time], I remember feeling lost, and vulnerable, and terrified at certain parts, and elated, excited, joyful at others. And I really want everyone to be able to feel like that, and also gain the kind of insight they need to be able to see how far gaming as a genre had come.)

I honestly hope you do end up picking it up, because despite its age, it's still one of my absolute favorite games, and one of the stories that made me fall in love with RPGs, and games in general. I still vividly remember the first time I played it, when I was like 18 (which was 12 years ago at this point), and how it broadened my horizons, because until then, I kinda thought that games were either like the Sims, or like.... idk, first person shooters, not these big, sweeping, immersive stories you can get lost in.

I LOVE these games- I feel like that much is clear, lol. I just don't love the people who insist that there is one right way to love them.

I don't want to turn off anon for exactly messages like yours, but honestly, I do recommend to everyone who is at all concerned to do just that, to block liberally, and control their experience of engaging with the games as harshly or as leniently as they like.

It'll be fine. There will likely be an influx of new people picking the series up for the first time (just like there was with BG3) (though lbr, there will probably be a lot of people FORGETTING that the series is 15 years old but I hope they'll keep an open mind), we'll get a much-needed blood transfusion with people like you, and I genuinely hope that you'll have a very nice experience overall. ❤️

........

Also maybe save my favorite reaction image from ten years ago, and use it liberally. I know I'm gonna:

[rabbiteclair]

okay let's try this again, this time with my brain plugged in

overall, story-wise I admire the devs' efficiency of storytelling in introducing new groups of characters, giving you a peek at the relationship dynamics between them and what makes them interesting, and then immediately proceeding to 'and now it's time for you to kill them, because you are running an RPG dungeon for hapless adventurers to dive into.' Several groups here feel like they could be the protagonists of a shorter game in their own right. sorry I killed you guys but you know how it is.

Mechanically... not gonna get too deep into the game's overall systems at this point, but I think they did a pretty solid job of making each new story encounter an interesting challenge with something new to deal with. Once I sorted out the whole 'you don't have enough good key pages to outfit the entire library, you've gotta shuffle them around a lot or you're playing on hard mode' thing, nothing has felt ridiculously hard when I first unlocked it, but very few fights have felt all that easy either. (The 'nothing has felt ridiculously hard' part may change soon though, because somebody thought it was a good idea to fight the Red Mist again. goddamn it Angela, I just did that last game. At least dig up the Backward Clock for me to fall back on if you're gonna pull this shit.)

I'm not gonna go into every single reception, but hitting some of the highlights...

Streetlight: Probably the first group I felt really bad about murdering? Sorry Lulu. (Okay these early ones are gonna be kind of short, lbr they have a lot less going on than later stuff.)

Zwei: Whoops felt bad again. This time it was ameliorated by getting Walter's key page and going 'wait you're gonna just... let me do that? Is this actually okay?'

Carnival: is the point that made me stop and go 'oh man these devs know how to do some weird transhumanism stuff,' and that basically doesn't let up for the rest of the game. On the other hand this is also the point where I kinda sighed and started finding all the endless industrial uses for dead humans a bit on-the-nose.

Dawn: well I can see no way that killing these guys could go poorly, not like one of them will have a days/weeks-long breakdown and turn into a swarm of flaming cherubs that kill tens of thousands of people or something haha. Yuna deserved more/cooler mechanics. Solo Fixer who carries her gear around in a guitar case or something and shows up like 'hey I just beat up some crazy stuff by myself.' make Yuna cooler you cowards.

Gaze: Gaze Office is cool as hell. I love them. Love their fucking C memory management joke names. (Which are apparently also Korean puns or something.) Love their weird rainbow camera heads. Too bad that they're kinda mechanically trash. They were one of the easiest fights for me, and I've never found much use for... anything they do, really.

Kurokumo: thus begins the era of Slashing Builds. this era has not yet actually ended for me.

Bremen: I actually felt a bit bad for these guys too. I mean sure they're murderers but they seem so earnest about it, and they did get their heads messed with by supernatural forces. But also why didn't you losers give me blunt power abilities. You should really take after Sayo more. I'm sure she's a fine role model.

Love Town: [banging pots and pans together] LOVE TOWN LOVE TOWN LOVE TOWN. listen the entire story here is so absurdly horrible and over the top that it's almost funny, but I feel like if you're gonna get invested in these games you've gotta be capable of looking at 'so they all spent millennia locked in a train and unable to die until the few who still retained some of their sanity sewed their bodies together into Flesh Amalgam Creatures to fight off their zombified comrades' and pumping your fist instead of pointing out that that all seems like a bit much. Tomerry was an interesting fight but at the same time, never wanna do that again. Some of my well-meaning friends warned me to gird my stomach for this section, unaware of just how much body horror media I've consumed over the years.

Sweepers: On one hand? I kinda came out of this liking the Sweepers themselves, despite everything. Aw, they're just a big happy family, makin' their way in the world. just, Their Way just happens to involve a lot of meathooks and, uh, liquefying people to make special goo or something? On the other hand fuck this fight. Even now that I've beaten it several times, I still hate it. This begins the pattern of 'nothing that is happening here, mechanically, is moral or just.'

Shi: okay look I don't have much to say about Shi itself. this is a basically-unrelated sidebar. You know how Yujin's key page gives you that broken speed die? I am cursed so that every single big attack targets it, and always with a really high speed so I can't intercept. A boss has some once-per-fight attack that's like '8-21 damage, on hit: stagger the target, apply 5 Fragile next round'? it's gonna target Yujin's broken die, with a speed of like 6-7, every single time. My friends assure me that this isn't intentional and I'm just very unlucky, but I'm this close to retiring the page and ripping the good parts off to use elsewhere. I've seriously lost four or five big fights over Yujin suddenly getting ripped in half three rounds in, or getting smacked with a 'if this hits anybody you automatically lose the fight' attack, with no ability to defend.

8 o'clock Circus: fuck this fight. Oswald isn't in it, but I appreciate his whole deal though. Like, he's not a good guy. I'm not even sure I like him. But it takes some skill to be an interesting fucked up clown in 2023, and he manages it.

Smiling Faces: I love how even after you read their books, there's no real explanation of what their deal is. at this point the game's just like 'look, they're weird old folks who chop people up or something and like to take fat bong rips, you can probably name a dozen explanations for all of this at this point.' The fight itself is an absolute pain thanks to Deep Drag, but your reward is... being able to hit enemies with Deep Drag. I don't like smoke builds as much as most people, it seems, but I'll concede that when they do work they're great. And, I mean, I still put a smoker on most teams up until fairly recently.

Crying Children: sometimes a fight is just too fucking long. I'm sorry Phil "the big sad baby" McFixer, but if you want me to get invested in your personal character arc you've gotta limit your boss fight to like five phases tops. (Angela is exempt from this of course.)

WARP Crew: see the Love Town bullet above, but also I felt pretty bad about killing these guys too. Sorry Lesti. Also I find it very funny that part of the reason behind the VIP seats is to make sure that anybody with really expensive combat augs is not waiting for them inside the train after spending about two millennia losing their goddamn mind.

Blue Reverb/Church of Gears: I really expected this fight to be harder but let's be real I haven't seen the last of this asshole.

Cane: I'm just here for Nemo, babey.

R Corp: hhhhh. For one thing, this fight is a fucking slog, and it opens up with possibly the hardest act of its three. For another, you're gonna make me kill Myo? Really? On the upside: Rabbit-based titles for everyone. I haven't beaten this reception yet since I only tried it once so far and went in unprepared for some of the tomfoolery, but I still got within about two hits of winning, so I'm confident I'll get it next time.

Night Awls/Udjat/Kim/Dong-hwan: yesssss give me your stuff. I could've gone without having to fight the Udjat though.

[geoffreytoday]

As a Star Trek fan, I've always been kind of ambivalent about DS9.

I remember when it was on its way. There was a lot of hype, which in retrospect is interesting to think about in a pre-internet era. Back in the day when our sources for sci-fi entertainment news were things like Entertainment Tonight, or magazines like Starlog. No social media, no websites, just a half-hour "news" show that was mostly a vehicle for industry puff pieces, and... I've gotten off track, I apologize.

I was a huge TNG nerd, and I could not wait to have another Trek series. This lead to, I think, the first incident which potentially soured my experience with DS9. Through no fault of the show mind you.

Coming up on the premier of DS9, the Home Shopping Network (is that still a thing? I haven't had cable for like 26 years. If it's not still a thing, for those not in the know, it was a tv channel dedicated to showcasing shit you could buy from home. With the advent of online shopping, I can imagine it might no longer exist) featured the show's writing bible. I was so excited about that. What a thing to have! I managed to convince my mom, and she purchased it. What arrived was a small packet of badly xeroxed, barely legible pages, stapled together. The disappointment was huge, and in fact my mom returned it and got a refund.

It was certainly unfair of me to hold that experience against the show, but I was barely 14 at the time.

DS9 did not immediately grab me. Politics were not a thing I was interested in, or much enjoyed. Religion even less so. The changeling effects which had been much discussed leading up to the series premier were underwhelming and kinda embarrassing. At 14, it was just not the Trek show for me. I gave it a few episodes, and then abandoned it for the comfort and familiarity of TNG.

Round about, I think either the season 3 or 4 premier, I gave it another shot. TNG was gone now, and Voyager failed even harder than DS9 had at grabbing my attention. The commercials were exciting. Worf was coming to the series, and supposedly the peace treaty between the Klingons and the Federation was going to end. I was sold.

That lasted all of two episodes before the Klingons and the Federation were pals again. I felt manipulated. I was annoyed that they had pulled the ol' bait and switch on me. I had given DS9 another chance, and it had played me for a sucker. Regardless of whether that was the intent, or how the rest of the season played out, I was miffed enough that I was done.

In the decades since, I've come around. I no longer think poorly of DS9. In fact, I've reached a point where I am actively interested in giving the entire series another chance. The problem is, I am still afflicted by an inability to watch shows alone. It's gotten marginally better, but it's still something of a struggle for me (I legitimately wish I knew how it got so bad, as it didn't used to be a thing for me)

I need a DS9 pal. Someone who would actually be interested in hanging out on a regular basis to watch through the series. Unfortunately, my social circle is practically non existent these days. I see people socially once or twice a month if I'm lucky, which I'm usually not, and honestly, the majority of that is an rpg game that I run, which while I love it and it's super fun, is not the same as having a simple one on one hang out.

Am I talking too much? I'm talking too much.

[grim-echoes]

spill about LOSE-A honestly. one thing, though: everybody who plays lose-a lauds it for its candle-wax-on-nutsack, careful-incsision-against-inner-thigh, wooden-ruler-snapping-against-asscheeks difficulty which my challenge gamer brain can't. let. go. do you have any recs for truly difficult rpgs? and also is lose-a really difficult in a fun way or just because mr. bioessentialism spams one hit kill moves

i don't really play a lot of games in general because i'm extremely choosy and also conservative with my spending habits so i'm gonna ask my followers (and anyone else) to rec rpgs in place of me, but i feel like this is as good an excuse as any to say play jimmy and the pulsating mass because it's still some of the most fun i've ever gotten out of an rpg battle system on account of being very intelligently, deliberately designed and encourages the player to strategize in fun, open-ended ways that make use of all of the game's mechanics in a way that nothing feels arbitrarily designed, and buffs/debuffs, statuses, and items are all incredibly useful, and sometimes necessary to work into a strategy (it feels like one of these are relatively ineffective or way way too powerful at any given time in most rpgs, but not jimmy).

shin megami tensei as a whole kinda belongs here (not persona specifically) because the franchise is kinda infamous for being THE difficult jrpg series, and it's also similar in design to jimmy where enemy and boss design is very intelligent and deliberate, and puts its faith directly in you as the player to think carefully about every encounter and exactly how to prepare--older entries are fucking brutal due to their age, but some recent games are much more accessible and fair while still being plenty tough.

i'd honestly make the comparison to dark souls for games like this in terms of game design and how the tough-but-fair approach ties into a specific thematic element of the games, but are constructed intelligently so that failure feels meaningful. lisa is like dark souls II comparatively where it hypes itself up with how brutal and dark and shit and hard it is and how you need to be selfish and heartless to prevail but it's built on the back of a juvenile, horribly unempathetic narrative completely disinterested in the struggles of its actual most poorly treated characters and the only thing it has to say with its permadeath + enemy instakill/russian roulette mechanics is that you're a selfish cunt for trying to be a good person which like. i don't know how old austin was when he first made these games but it literally feels like some shit he designed after engaging with his first philosophical text at 14

[broodygaming]

Cuz I have no self control, I'm already thinking of the next game jam I want to join up with. I rly appreciate all the kindness I receive on here and all the ppl who reach out to me when I'm floundering. It's so nice to have safe little corner to be a creative blob in.

I want to make the next one actually scary. Most of mine have been pretty kid friendly cuz my nephew likes to play my games. But the biggest criticism I got was (besides the battles being poorly balanced, lol) was it wasn't rly scary. Sad, creepy maybe, atmospheric but definitely not scary.

SO.

I have two directions I'm thinking about going and the more I think about it I'm leaning towards the later one. I'll describe them both anyways. This is mostly just me formulating my thoughts by writing them out, don't feel any social pressure to read all of this, lol.

The first idea is a small northern town that has a secret Christmas holiday ritual they do, called XXmas. Which I'm realizing sounds a little porny, that didn't occur to me until AFTER the name of the ritual is fairly important to the plot haha. I forget sex exists and that ppl have dirty minds.

Basically, the town ritually sacrifices one member when they're 20. They gather all the 19-20 year olds and have them draw for gifts and do a round robin thing and the person who gets the "bad gift" dies. Like drawing straws.

But the main protag has just moved to this town, just turned 20 and doesn't know about this ritual. So they're meeting their peers and helping them do things over a week long period that builds to THE DAY. And on The Day, somehow the MC knows that they have the package and they have a chance to either keep it or give it to someone. So YOU the player have to choose who to kill.

The idea being that it's replay-able and intertwined and if you help X on this day then you find out more about Y and vise versa, etc etc etc.

My worries with this is it's a little... dating sim? ish? and long? and complex? and all writing? And sounds like a nightmare to playtest? If I planned it out REALLY well and did a lot of prewriting I could prob make it nice but I'd be REALLY worried it's still not scary and it's just a lot of reading.

MY OTHER IDEA

Is really dark. High key trigger warning infant death dark.

I had the awful idea of a desperate mom who lost her child just a few days before christmas. And a friend comes over, knitting a huge stocking with crazy fervor. And she tells the MC she knows a ritual to ask "Santa" for a deceased baby back to life. You have to get the ritual exactly right or bad things happen. The stocking is a key first step. And it HAS to be done before midnight Christmas eve.

You have to figure out the riddles, follow the steps and complete a three step ritual to try and resurrect your infant and then go to sleep and see what happens. I think it'd be fun for their to be three different endings, one good one, one with a doppelganger baby and one where either an evil creature shows up and kills the MC or there's... idk a dead baby in the stocking. REALLY GENUINELY DARK. Like kinda outta my comfort zone dark. Yeesh. But that is actually closer to the vibe of these game jams that I'm picking up on. Ppl like the dark shit.

I'm worried about riddles. I like writing them and low key think I'm pretty good at it. I think ppl hate them, haha. Idk. Some ppl like them, some don't. You can't please everyone. I think I want a mix of classic rpg puzzles and the hint to get through them is in the riddle. Every puzzle has a Good, Bad, Worst option of completion. Idk what that looks like but I'm just brainstorming rn, so eh.

[thorne1435]

As someone who grew up playing random MMORPGs, I gotta say, making fun of them will always be the funniest shit to me.

I'm gonna put the rest behind a readmore it doesn't matter that much.

I think this is why, despite the fact that I generally dislike anime and have no interest in Sword Art Online, I fucking love Sword Art Online Abridged. The EverQuest joke in the first episode lives in my head rent-free. All of the RPer jokes in Season 2 are fucking golden. Because you can just tell it's written by people who played MMOs and know exactly what people are like in those games.

I seriously mean it: if you ever want to make me laugh, just say something like "My guild kicked me out because I had to go to work... :("

It's so low effort and cliché, as far as MMORPG jokes go, but it's absolutely true, that's exactly what's wrong with them, they're just so time-consuming.

And that's why you would play MMORPGs for the roleplaying, right? But the games themselves are only RPGs in that you have stats to look at, and the fan-based RP community is always so weird and cliquish and fetishy. Because as it turns out, doing something that's some where between group-project fanfiction and improv acting attracts fetish writers. And then you point out that they're being kinda weird and fetish-y and like, no-hate, but that's not what you were really looking for and THEN THEY KICK YOU OUT BECAUSE THEY DON'T LIKE YOU ANYMORE SO YOU LOSE YOUR FUCKING SOCIAL CIRCLE AND YOU CAN'T PLAY THE GAME ANYMORE SO YOU GO TO THE NEW ONE AND THE SAME THING HAPPENS THERE TOO!

Like, I love MMOs as a concept, but my. fucking. god. they are so poorly executed...

[annoyed-galaxy]

For the first three TES games question:

The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind? Oh god yes, play it play it now, the story is amazing, the gameplay is janky but used to convey certain things about the world, the landscape is iconic and handcrafted, and it's been one of the few video game experiences that has felt magical in a very long time. It has the complex distinction of being where TES lore started really being like it is today. There's no shame in modding it either, everyone does and there are guides on it too.

The other two I haven't played, but going off on what I've heard:

The Elder Scrolls 2: Daggerfall? Sure. It's a lot more complex than the later games are, but everything I hear about it is... Good? It's a highly political story in that the politics of the land you're in are the main focus of the story, though there is Fantasy nonsense and the seeds of the TES lore we all know and love. The majority of the land and quests are procedurally generated, and therefore kinda bland, but the big quests are supposedly pretty great. To counter that, the map is *giant*, and there are a lot of non-quest things to do. You get to go to trial for crimes. You will have to use unofficial patches to get it to work properly on modern systems but like. It's a literal "drag and drop a few files" type deal. Did I mention that it's free?

The Elder Scrolls: Arena? I mean if you *want*.... It's a very primitive game, a lot of complexity is baked into it, but like. The procedural generation mentioned in Daggerfall is worse here, and it has less of the TES charm and lore that we associate with the series now. The main quest is literally a generic "yeah go find pieces of a staff to kill an evil wizard to free the king" plot. You do have the benefit of seeing all of Tamriel, though it's uh. Literally all procedurally generated outside of the cities. Also free, but like. More useful for seeing where it all started than as it's own game nowadays.

Two Early TES Games You Didn't Mention (sentence each):

The Elder Scrolls Battlespire? Rather fun, I hear, in a 90's way, but you need to stick to a known working build because it's poorly balanced.

The Elder Scrolls Adventures Redguard? This is the actual first TES game with modern-ish lore, andhas a smaller-scale story, but it is an action-adventure game and not an RPG, so idk.

Ahh I'm appreciating all the insight everyone's been giving. It seems that morrowwind is highly suggested to play through whereas the other two seem to have mixed reviews. Main reason I wanted to play the older TES games is because I want to experience the first steps of Tamriel and really want to know about the main quest stories to see how it shapes everything for later games.

It sounds like the first two games are some hassles and not really my style of games as is, so I might pass on playing those and just watched some videos about their stories and then actually try to play morrrowind.

[slightly-gay-pogohammer]

so i keep seeing homestuck mentioned. im gonna ask. what is homestuck??????? (like ik its a web series and was popular in uhhhh the 2010's but aside from the candy corn horns idk anything else. something about a hive swap? idk man help me out gio

Homestuck is a story of a kid and his friends and a game they play together :)

and oh man i can't believe i googled this pic in the year of the lord 2022 but. alas.

yes this is going under read more

OKAY FIRST OF ALL TECHNICALLY SPEAKING?

it's a webcomic except not really. the way it's written is heavily based on old text-based adventure games, with a few panels with art and everything else written underneath, either from the point of view of a narrator or with chatlogues/dialogues of the main characters the comic also has some animation (or "flashes"), some occasional minigames and RPG-like games and songs, some of which made by toby fox

and yes i'd argue that a lot of things in HS aged poorly or weren't well written from the very start but the songs are literally all bangers. like even if you don't follow homestuck i cant not recommend the songs a LOT of stuff was really a product of its time too. like there's a lot of lolrandom humor, occasional jokes that would likely not fly rn that while can be excused with "these are 13 years olds and also like all them is canonically dealing with internalized homophobia, undiagnosed mental health issues or both" some parts really aged like milk

the entire plot is divided in 7 acts, with sub-acts and intermissions between each one of them to "divide" the story in chapters. like the first one is all "outside" the game the, the second introduces more characters, act 5 is the best one, act 7 is only the final flash to conclude the entire story

...and yes okay the story is, again, about a kid and his friends and a game they play together. basically on the 13th of April 2009 best boy John becomes 13 years old and recieves a game to play with his pals. It's a game that literally alters reality and that, once an item in the game is activated, summons a meteor. just roll with it this is how this universe works. "oh the gang needs to save the world then?" nah lmao the world is literally doomed their goal is to reach worlds spawned from the game, become gods, defeat the final boss and create a new universe

of course however things dont go as planned :)

all of this is explained approximately 1% into the whole story by the way

other than this, the kids are also dealing with a bunch of trolls from another world (the candy corn zodiac dudes), a bunch of NPCs from the game, alternate timelines, the literal goddamn author and lots and lots of death. Like HS is kinda infamous for killing of characters left and right. It has it's own set of rules to keep most of them relevant, like introducing ghosts, "dream" selves, the alternate timelines (Dave especially is SUCH a fun time he gets time-related powers and he gets to see SO many version of him dying :) ) or the whole way death works once the characters become gods, in which they can die only if their death is "just" (so if they were fucked up and evil and their death was justified") or "heroic" (so if they sacrifice themselves to protect someone, basically)

and. yes again homestuck isn't a story to take lightly, reading it requires a LOT of critical thinking, but it honestly has some of the best written kid protagonists I've ever read? Like with some duds of course *cough*gamzee*cough*act6vriska*cough*calliope*cough*, but most of them are really well fleshed out, with lots of flaws and good qualities, funny as hell, and for most of them their traumas and problems are integral part of their character growth - and yes while you get kind of used to see them die over and over have some of them Actually Die is. genuinely shocking and hurts so much?

like again shoutout to Dave but also Karkat because they start off as the "cool kid" and "angry kid" tropes and yet they get so much growth, learning to understand their limits and rationalizing traumas from the past. like the very last scene we get with Dave before the final battle is one of the best written pieces of media I've ever read

..........................................you just need to kind of. First of all pull a death of the author since they're kind of a douchebag and also remember that this started in 2009, likely with no intentions of making it a story as big as it ended up being. I don't think I would recommend HS to someone who "wasn't there" not for gatekeeping but specifically because. It's a product of it's time, and I think that if you finish Act 1 (in which basically nothing important happens, if not putting down the bases of the general tone) and aren't into it you likely won't likei t even when it gets so much better since

yes it's a story with very serious topics that WILL take seriously it's characters, but it's also a story that not only would drop everything from a page to another because the author decided to commit character assassination for his fav but. also one of the plot points is that the main villain of the first half went on a murder spree because he didn't want to dress like a clown. one of the plot points is that insane clown posse and guy fieri became presidents. one of the plot points is that the author has a crush on dante basco and rufio from "hook" is mentioned so many goddamn times. a plot point has buckets being used for reproduction. this is a canon line.

so is this one

and also it's a shame that they didn't do anything else afterwards :) that there is no hiveswap even if the kickstarter literally broke a lot of records :) that there is no epilogue :) that there is no sequel :) friendsim can stay but it's on thin fucking ice

TL;DR: homestuck is the most webcomic ever and also the ending was fine you guys are just mean

[danzafila]

ok, so. there's two common complaints/arguments against Byleth: 1) that they're a self insert (and self inserts are inherently terrible) and 2) that they're a wooden plank with no personality (that sucks the life/decent writing out of every character they come in contact with)

and basically, I think the self insert complaint kinda misses the mark with what the biggest issue with their writing is and the wooden plank complaint is simply inaccurate

1) imo, there's two prevailing (very different) ways to do an RPG protagonist. either you provide a blank slate (or customizable template) for players to create their own character out of or you provide a predetermined character (or choice between multiple) that players will merely be along for the ride with, but have little/no influence over. neither is inherently worse, they just work differently (and require different things to make them work)

so calling Byleth a "self insert" is a misplaced critique to me partially bc, well, that's an entire style of RPGs you're criticizing there, but also because... I don't think that's even the issue with where Byleth went wrong? to me, it looks like what happened was they were attempting to blend the two styles, but did so poorly, fucking up Byleth's execution in the process

it seems like they wanted us to be able to play a create-your-own style PC, but wrote them into a story calling for a predetermined character. and they left too much of a defined backstory and hints at personality and all (and too little choice) for us to really be able to do the whole create-your-own thing, but still not enough for them to feel like a fully fleshed out defined character in their own right beyond generic player avatar

2) honestly, I think a big reason I disagree with the assertion Byleth has no personality is specifically bc I'm far more used to the blank slate ("self insert" if you wanna be derogatory) approach to RPG PCs and pretty quickly found I couldn't create my own character with Byleth.... because they do have a predetermined backstory and, yes, even personality

it's just.... weird lol. weird and, specifically, a big aspect of it is them initially being very emotionally reserved/stunted. but, like, they have an entire freaking character arc of developing stronger emotions/starting to feel things more, so idk how you can look at that and say they've got nothing going on lol

maybe I'm just a fool projecting a personality I've developed out of whole cloth that's not there in game here, but... idk. to me, it's subtle bc Byleth's a v muted/low-key character (by intention), but it's absolutely there. it's just that their personality is weird and muted and *intentionally* emotionally stunted at first, so I guess that comes off as weirdly blank to a lot of people

[cl1v9zfsfo1]

Some personal recs for those finishing/liking OMORI so far

After 6 years, this game made it to the top in less than a week....

Lately, RPG Maker games have been somewhat staying in the shadows. And as a (horror) RPG Maker sucker, even though I suck at giving advice, I’d love to spread the word about some other similar projects. To either save you or throw you into a eternal cycle of despair.

So here you have... The Incredible Low Budget “You May Also Like...” Viddygame List For OMOREE Fans (For Free!11)

(TW thread ver including personal thoughts on some of them) (For RPG Maker fans, have this huge list kofy and I made with links and CWs listed! Still a big WIP but we update it regularly!)

Before playing the games, remember to read tags carefully.

Personal note: Exceptions noted, most of these games are free and made by only one dev, or no money has been previously invested in them. They’re not huge projects like OMORI was... But please don't think of them as poorly made! There’s always a ton of love and effort involved in each project.

Now, without further ado... Here we go!✨ (Added a few tags regarding abuse and mental health, TY /melohax!)

1. END ROLL

Tags: death, blood, family abuse, murder, eye horror, animal death, suicide, drug mention, implied sexual abuse (+ one optional/hidden map implying child abuse). Battle system, no jumpscares but sudden horror-ish scenario changes including low/saturated sound effects.

Gameplay is ~10 hours, so it is kinda long for a game of the sort. It follows Russell’s dreams in a sort of... program, yes.  Great narrative and very horror-driven. It has lots of things to explore and many sode quest you can do to unlock endings and info. It is filled with overall negative vibes and messages and touches some heavy topics. If OMORI unsettled you, consider skipping this one.

In terms of narrative, I think it's the closest to OMORI.

2. Hello Charlotte series

Tags: eye/body horror horror, mild graphic gore, religious themes, in-screen bullying, death and suicide, parental and personal difficulties. No jumpscares, optional battle system. For people with psychosis/schizophrenia, this game can be really overwhelming. Please take care and check/ask for more info before playing it!  (TY @/melohax for addressing this!)

Series of 4 games + spin-off VN. Gameplay of about 3 hours/each. As I always say: Before dropping it, wait for EP 2 and on. It’ll be a big ride. Very interesting imagery. May be be graphic at times, but it puts some (very) relatable thoughts into words really well.

Not that close to OMORI but I fans can really enjoy it if focusing on its psychological themes.

3. Life Tastes Like Cardboard

Tags: loud noises, derealization, strong depictions of depression and discussion on negative feelings.

Definitely a vent/personal game. You just follow the main character’s mind and body, thoughts and experiences. It is VERY visual, and plays with colors, sarcasm, size changes in maps and strong colors to strongly depict a feeling of overbearing pain and loneliness. Many people (me included) said this game is really overwhelming, which is probably the main intention of the game itself... Play carefully it if you usually empathize with this kind of content. Even so, for those willing to explore sad feelings through art, this game is a really good option.

4. Witch’s Heart

Tags: blood, murder, death, family abuse, and mild eye/body horror. Battles (no leveling, just kicking monsters here and there), no jumpscares, puzzles.

Two games of about 15 hours/each and ongoing conclusions for each route. The storytelling is closer to a book or VN. Lots of mistery and text, small pieces of information, and the kind of game you’ll definitely regret to play twice just to find everything makes sense and you didn’t even notice at first. You have to play the game through many routes to piece the story together.

It honestly has little to do with any OMORI vibes. However, if you’re a fan of character analysis and drama, this one will be one of your best choices, probably.

5. Farethere City

Tags include blood and death.

Gameplay of about 3 hours. A previous work from the same author as END ROLL (am i this biased). Much brighter themes. Some fans find it dull- the gameplay is much shorter than some of the games above. The worldbuilding is sad and cute, and easy to understand too.

6. Re:Kinder

Tags include death, family abuse, depression, mild gore/grotesque imagery, suicide. Battle system (no lvling), no jumpscares.

Gameplay of around 3 hours. Suggesting this one is a kind of... Russian roulette. You either understand and love it, or find it gross and nonsensical. It’s a remake of a 2003 game called “a cry of help” by some fans, since the author passed away shorty after posting it. I think it’s important to have the release date in mind to be warned about some stuff that can come off as disrespectful sometimes.

Very naive artstyle, has plenty of crude jokes and nonsensical scenes. The plot doesn't drastically unfold until you clear half of the game. In my opinion, the strongest point is definitely the way children are sensitive about depression, and the way they deal with it.

7. Mouth Sweet

Tags include loud & saturated noises, violence, laboral abuse, in-screen animal abuse (just once towards the end), attempts of identity erasure (trans ppl, check website warnings just in case), mentions of suicide attempts. Battle system, you'll have to shoot at random "enemies" frecuently.

Gameplay of about 2 hours. Really blunt. Can get really stressing, but fairly sure that’s the feeling the author was trying to convey.

Even as eerie as it tries to be delivered itself, it feels real, and it hurts a little.  Has a strong message to tell about overwhelming toxic enviroments.

8. Fantasy Maiden’s Odd Hideout

Tags: blood and death. No battle system, chases, no jumpscares.

Gameplay of around 5 hours. Has to be played twice to get the whole story (usually worth it).

Not very close to OMORI, has some pacing issues, but the quick things escalate once you connect the dots makes up for it, and vaguely resembles the game.  From the same author as Chloe’s Requiem (tw for implied child abuse in this one) (starring: a piano and a violin, for those looking for The Content)

9. LISA series

Tags (severe, btw): body horror, sexual abuse, mutilation, violence, blood, grotesque imagery, family abuse, drug use, constant swearing. Battle system, no jumpscares.

Three games, maybe of about 5 hours/each (first installment, LISA: The First is shorter than that). Started as a sort of Yume Nikki fangame and ended being its own genre. Even for local RPG Maker fans, it can be a VERY hard to swallow pill. The gameplay can get a bit extreme- you’re forced to make difficult choices all the time, even sacrificing body parts, and it can affect your stats quite too much.

If you’re into OMORI for the anime-ish style, this one won’t be your cup of tea... maybe?

10. Tomorrow Will be Dying

An interactive VN on progress. The Kickstarter was successfully funded on March and it’s aiming for release in 2022. Made by a caring, lovely, small team, the project looks AMAZING so far.

Apparently not horror-driven but talks about friends, youth, living your own... A very promising game, just like OMORI back then.

11. Pocket Mirror

Tags: blood. No battle system, chases, no jumpscares but follows the classic horror RPG criteria (kinda).

Gameplay of about 5 hours. Lots of symbolism and imagery to tell the journey of a girl finding about herself when no one did. Not a huge blow like OMORI, and you will need to read some theories to fully connect all the dots and small details, but I’d say it can suit your tastes too, somehow.

Unlike many other RPGs, it has some animated sections AND voice acting!! That rocks too.

Other titles ‘cause otherwise I won’t end this post in years:

- Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass (Gameplay is +40 hours, tags include gore, death, kinda grotesque imagery. The battle system is a bit meh but the dialogues and story are amazing) - Lobotomy Corporation (NOT a RPG but a management simulator. Tags include BODY HORROR, death. It’s a game about... uhh... making OCs and... taking care of things called Abormalities... but there’s a lot of lore to unfold...?? More popular sequel is Library of Ruina) - To the Moon (relies A LOT on narrative, tags include death and crying like crazy) - Rule of Rose (NOT a RPG; for PS2, rated +18 for many troubled themes inclusing animal death, bullying and heavy implied child abuse)

And that’s all...?? I’m sorry for making such a long post 🙏🏿💦 Some people found it useful, so I tried to add a few more here for any OMORI Tumblr fans looking for more fun (haha..! y..yeah;;;,..; f..fun..,;!!111) If you need any details or something is troubling you... Here I am!!

Thank you for reading! Have fun and take care!

[volfoss]

If you're still doing headcanons uhhh how about some for Ghiacco and Risotto? Btw hope you're having a good morning/day!

hi! ik i already apologized in dms but sorry for not getting to this yesterday! under the cut bc long

Ghiaccio:

I feel like he draws a lot but its mostly doodles!

Listens to audiobooks while driving because it's easier on the go

Picks up new languages rather easily

Writes exclusively with red pens (I feel also prefers gel pens?) and has kinda small cramped handwriting

I feel like he knows a lot of constellations

Keeps his home pretty clean but has a bit of carefully placed clutter

Favorite colors are red and grey

Sings along to the radio when he's alone

Really loves soup (not just bc the haha wow cold stand thing, but i think just because its easy to use the ingredients that LS has around the base and make smth filling)

I feel he plays a lot of games, both video games and things like DnD and board games that take a while

Risotto:

Sends really formal emails/messages in their groupchat, like not to the point that it sounds like a 18th century letter but moreso just kind of stilted but its very clear what hes trying to say

Is a man of few words not bc hes like super soft and anxious but because he thinks a lot ahead of time what he needs to say and can concisely get his thoughts out a lot better that way

I think his keychain would have a lot of keys on it (not sure why i just feel it could be used as a weapon if he wanted it to be)

When hes working on his pc, the only light thats there normally is one of those gooseneck magnifying desk lamps because it helps him see his keyboard more and the overhead light makes it too bright (is projecting)

If he plays any games, I feel like he would enjoy isometric rpgs, like Diablo or the first two fallout games! (ik isometric is just the term for the camera angle however i feel he would enjoy that angle idk if that makes sense)

Despite being so large, he can be really good at walking silently due to doing it a lot as a kid

His handwriting is really neat and not like necessarily blocky? but its very uniform

Would have a few pictures/paintings on his walls if LS wasnt paid so poorly, idk why i feel he really would enjoy more abstract paintings

Takes a ton of the burden of leading LS, so is ALWAYS busy and just doesnt have a lot of time to relax when hes actually home

I dont see him lighting a ton of candles but if he did, it would be relatively neutral scents, idk why i am thinking very distinctly of the Beach Wood candle by yankee candle however i am

[loquaciousquark]

Talks Machina Highlights - Critical Role C2E111 (Redux! Oct. 13, 2020)

Gooooood evening good evening good evening, all! I started the VOD late for this recap and somehow the first four or so minutes of the show have a Twitch audio copyright claim, so I am reduced to only reading Brian's lips when he asks if we're on the internet. Hilariously, Marisha's background room is a comfy-looking blue/gold fabric wall with a ceramic colorful abstract lamp and a yellow silk scarf over the lampshade, and Taliesin's is an industrial looking games room in grey and black with multiple monitors, overhead speakers, and mysterious metal fixtures behind him. What a treasure this group is, honestly.

Tonight's guests: Marisha Ray & Taliesin Jaffe, discussing episodes 110 and 111 again. I wildly speculate once more about what might have caused their absence: jury duty? Sam appearing on The Masked Singer? Something to do with the animated show? One day, we’ll know, one day... (One day this “copyrighted audio” section will come back from the wars, too. Ugh!) Finally! The audio comes back to reveal Brian discussing the endless reality of digital meetings and Marisha talking about (I think) her glare-reducing glasses she’s wearing. Welcome to the New Age (welcome to the New Age, to the New Age).

Announcements: Marisha suggests checking out Dimension20, another live tabletop gaming group, which premieres live on Wednesdays at 4pm (CollegeHumor). 

Brian immediately wants to know how they feel about the revelation that Molly is alive. Taliesin’s personal reaction: he “knows some things” he can’t talk about and is aware of several possibilities that might be going on, but had a sneaking suspicion that there would not be a body for them to find. He says it’s almost all there for anyone to see in past material. Marisha’s personal reaction: she just wants to know how she’s doing with her theories, & was trying to block Tal’s face out deliberately as she was going off on her theories in the last episode. Taliesin says he thought her ideas were pretty good!

Cad has no clue what to think - it’s like listening to your friends talk about Buffy. Marisha thought it was a 50/50 Molly would still be there, but Beau had no idea. Not that it mattered, because as soon as Matt went through with it the reveal still blew their minds. Tal laid out his plans for the character with Matt during Campaign One (towards the end) after they all got their VM tattoos.

It is a “horrifying and gross” thing to dig up a body, and Beau was pretty reluctant to do it. Tal, as Cad: “Sometimes dead’s better.” The moral quandary of trying to speak with a dead friend was very different here than the frequent occasions they used the spell in C1.

Taliesin says his poker face is very bad, so it’s easier for him to over-react and let it all play out. The only other player he can see very easily from his place in their current setup is Travis, and because he knows Travis doesn’t watch TM, tweet, or participate in social media, he admits he thoroughly enjoyed watching Travis freak out at his freaking out. He says he only knew about 20% of what Matt described at the end of that episode. He was picking things to mug to increase Travis’s surprise. I love this so much.

Taliesin provided the table left leg shake; Travis provided table right. Ha!

Beau is really accepting her role in the Cobalt Soul. It’s good when “as a person, you feel like you can settle into your calling. Sometimes you can do more from the inside than fighting from the outside.” It’s a mirrored but opposite path of Keyleth from C1; Beau felt like she was too good for her duty, while Keyleth thought she wasn’t good enough.

Caduceus is not a big believer in jumping to conclusions. He does have an idea/notion of the “city of the undead” and thinks all this necrotic energy must come from somewhere, and wonders if this is the “capital of anti-death.” He’s willing to believe whatever he sees. This is one of the few things that trigger a bit of loathing and disgust in him. It was terrifying that the Wildmother didn’t know anything.

Beau is pretty confident in her Charlie Day impression laying-out-the-research last episode. She enjoyed taking the things that were known & extrapolating around them; this is a huge facet of Marisha’s own personality and she really enjoys it, so she built a character this time that would allow that kind of puzzle-solving. It’s also why she repeatedly notes when Beau journals, so she can avoid metagaming. Trent’s mention of Vess Durogna’s tomb raiding was completely circumstantial, and the only reason she’d made the connection to the Tombtakers was because she’d recently reviewed those notes for a separate unannounced project. Sometimes she tries to make connections and Matt is like, “It was...just descriptive. Just flavor. The curtains were red...” and she has to discard a paragraph of notes. She feels like it’s still something they have to do because of “look at what he does! Look! It’s totally valid!”

Cosplay of the Week: @kitsunstudios with a gorgeous Caduceus with a very intricate silk vest.

Caduceus’s takedown of Trent! One of my favorite moments in the entirety of C2. Taliesin felt Trent was an asshole; Caduceus felt sorry for him because of how dumb he thought he was. Caduceus’s response was "this is the dumbest man I’ve ever met in my life. He’s so dumb! Is nobody going to tell this guy how dumb he is? Oh, they’re all freaked out. Somebody needs to tell this guy he’s an idiot before somebody gets hurt.” (Marisha: “Before?”) Tal says it was the product of several years of therapy and many drunk conversations with Whitney Moore. It was from a genuine place of concern from Caduceus. “How are you allowed to have this much power and be that dumb?”

Brian loved how funny it was to watch everyone tiptoe around Trent and then Caduceus bulldoze through the end of the meal.

Taliesin: “Damage doesn’t make you interesting or better. It’s not what makes you good. Character isn’t found in damage. Just recovery.”

Brian & Marisha commiserate going through the stage where believing surviving something automatically made you a stronger person, better for the pain; instead it just meant you had to pick up the pieces after. Marisha talks about how strength through survival may be true for some people, but it shouldn’t be considered a necessity. Taliesin talks about how he used to think he had to be miserable to write. Brian talks about how believing he liked reading and writing miserable things only limited him for years.

Marisha feels it’s a C2 theme that almost all the PCs have someone trying to handwave or take credit for their accomplishments or explain their pain as being for their own good (Trent, Beau’s dad, Obann). She thinks it’s interesting to see all the various ways people try to take credit for your work/delegitimize you as a person. She loves that RPGs allow you to explore these odd moralities in interesting ways. The only way to fight it is to have a sense of your own self-worth, which is a problem a lot of the M9 started with.

Caduceus likes everyone, and really likes people who appear to need role models (Eodwulf). “With the right friends and the right bar and the right attitude, I think he’d be okay. Come over here where it’s so much better. That seems like an exhausting friendship that you have there.”

Marisha loves the mix of personalities in the M9; Veth, Cad, & Jester were all “we kind of like them!” after the dinner, and she immediately made eye contact with Travis and they both shook their heads. She knows Beau has to go along with it for Caleb’s sake for now, but she & Fjord are pretty sus of Trent’s proteges.

Beau is less concerned about Artagan’s relationship to Jester because “he showed his ass--she’s less worried about Jester now because a little of the magic is gone.” It’s a little like becoming an adult and realizing your parents are also just adults & human. Caduceus wasn’t suspicious of the Traveler for a long time until they got to the island. Aside: Taliesin loves the pantheon in D&D. “The notion of attempting to apply common Western conceptions of religion to a world where you have a pantheon of interventionist gods as baseline makes no sense to me. Everyone admits that every other god is there and doing shit; it has more in common with ancient Rome than anything else.” Now that he knows it was a con, he feels the wind had been taken out of it. He does have a sense that Jester’s gotten back together with an ex: “I hope that I’m really happy for you.” They’re both interested to see how Jester navigates the new relationship.

My internet goes out, of course. I panic for a second, thinking I’ve lost everything above, but all is well! Thanks, Form History Control addon!

Marisha loved punching Artagan, but regretting rolling so poorly. “I miss violence.” Dani lets us know it’s been about four episodes since the last battle.

There’s no way the Cobalt Reserve doesn’t have a single document on the Eyes of Nine. Beau believes “there are no real secrets” because people are just bad at not writing things down. For there to be no information at all seems really suspicious for her.

Fanart of the Week: @oddalchemist on twitter with some awesome Beau conspiracy red-thread boards overlaid a distant shadowy Molly walking away.

Caduceus feels a little guilty for really enjoying his time right now with the M9 and not wanting to go home. He’s starting to suspect that he’s going to go home very different than when he left. “He has the softest problems. I don’t know if I want to move back in with Mom & Dad.”

Beau is trying to get comfortable with the idea of being happy. Jester is probably Beau’s first real best friend & one of the first healthy female friendships she’s ever had. As long as she still has Jester in her life, she doesn’t care. For Yasha... “At the end of the day, Beau is a lonely person and has always been a lonely person. And I think you kinda reach this point where once you’re not lonely anymore, you can kind of come out of the fog and realize that was horrible! And terrifying! And is even more terrifying now that I know what I could have, and I don’t want to go back to that. At the end of the day Beau doesn’t want to be lonely anymore. There’s always been that flirtation with Yasha, but everyone had to figure their own shit out. And now it feels like it’s coming out a little bit of that haze, maybe this actually could be...” There are a lot of ways they complement each other & are good-different from each other. Marisha believes people can be attracted to more than person at once.

Caduceus doesn’t think nature turned against him on Rumblecusp, it was just a reality of nature being dangerous and violent. “He has a complex relationship with nature.” He doesn’t expect special treatment.

Thoughts on the mansion: “Man, it’s nice to be seen.” Marisha: “I don’t know how I ended up becoming the Scanlan of this campaign, but I’m living for it.” It felt like an echo of “I’m better for having known you.” They compare Marisha taking specific notes on the campaign to Liam taking specific notes on people’s favorite tapestries, comics, etc.

They talk about missing theme parks and daydream a park version of the mansion in CritRoleLand. It’s lovely.

Taliesin never expected Divine Intervention to work; he just wanted to roll some dice. He’s still processing what he saw/heard. They all agree it was very useful in the Vokodo fight.

Vilya! Marisha: “Ah! Ah! Ah!” As a player, Marisha was so deep in Beau’s eyes she didn’t pick up it was Vilya at first (especially since Matt really emphasized they should not be looking for C1 NPCs). Marisha’s brain melted. She bawled her eyes out on the ride home after that episode. Right after it ended, Laura told Marisha “Keyleth finally gets her happy ending,” and it makes Marisha emotional again since Keyleth’s story ended so bittersweetly. She talks about the very real feelings of “just wanting them to be happy, though!” She went back and listened to all her old Keyleth playlists. Everyone was teary after the episode. “Everyone has these 100% real memories of being these characters and having these good times.”

And that’s that for that! Thanks for your patience, all, and is it Thursday yet?

[veebs-hates-video-games]

Ok before I forget about it completely now that I've moved on to other stuff for like a week already I should probably say something about Astria Ascending.

Astria Ascending is a trainwreck, but it's one that I spent literally a hundred hours on. The art style and music are generally pretty good (although some NPC designs are kinda iffy, but at least the artists were less horny on main than for XC2), and I thoroughly enjoyed the job system and combat. It's obviously heavily influenced by various older FF games in a lot of ways, especially 12, but mechanically I actually liked this more than most of them.

Coincidentally, and despite being made by a non-Japanese indie studio, they had a couple people who've worked on FF games contribute writing and music. The music was a good call, and that was one of the things that was consistently pretty good in the game. The writing was not a good call, and it was one of the things that was consistently not good in the game.

I know Tetsuya Nomura has worked on lots of good games, including ones that I've really liked, but I kind of have a long history of not getting along great with his writing. Like I had plenty of fun with FF7 and FF8, but I'm not going to pretend the stories weren't a complete mess, especially in 8. I liked the worlds and characters and stuff enough to get past that though. And even though I haven't played them myself, I kind of had the same reaction to the KH games he's worked on.

And then there's FFX, which I kind of hated. Like a lot. I only finished it out of spite and because my laptop was in for repairs that week. It started out with a bunch of interesting stuff, and I had tons of ideas of where it might be going with it, but every time they revealed something significant about the world or plot it was less interesting than everything I'd thought of. So I'd readjust my speculation based on the new information, and then a few hours later I'd be disappointed again. By the end it had just been disappointment after disappointment for a few dozen hours, and it remains one of my least favorite RPGs I've ever played, and definitely my least favorite I've actually finished.

Good news though! Astria Ascending's story and writing is a lot like FFX, only a lot worse. There are a decent number of interesting things about the world, but it just doesn't go anywhere with any of them ever and has the most bland and superficial possible story with no real depth. At least in other stuff he's worked on they generally at least have good characters or character interactions or character development that carries them, but that barely exists here. I would struggle to come up with five adjectives to describe most of the main cast without resorting to really generic stuff, and hardly anything happens to them and they barely change or grow.

I know I said good news, but that wasn't actually entirely sarcastic. It kinda lets you know up front that it's not particularly well written, so I never got my hopes up and was never really disappointed.

I feel like I've been almost entirely negative, but I really did have plenty of fun aside from that. They said they were inspired by FF12, especially the International Zodiac Job System version, and it shows. I genuinely liked the job system and some of the wacky combinations of things you can put together with it, and once I figured out how things work my party was constantly doing very silly things.

The side quests are sometimes poorly explained, and I eventually stopped wandering around finding where stuff was on my own and just looked it up online, but I was actually pleasantly surprised that it had some decent puzzles here and there in the dungeons/temples and mostly enjoyed going through those even if the map is a disaster. They've also basically fixed the game breaking bugs it had for the first few months it was out, so while it's still pretty unpolished and has some weird issues sometimes it's at least playable now without major issues.

Also it has one of the best card game minigames since Triple Triad, which I wasted a lot of time on. It's not quite as good as Triple Triad in the end because the random rule just makes it stop being fun 80% of the time instead of just being harder and taking more thinking, but at least the rules each NPC uses are fixed so you're not spreading around bad rules like in Triple Triad. I feel like they had potential to do a bit more with it than they did, but ultimately I had a lot more fun with it than something like Gwent.

So yeah, I can't really say it's a good game, but it's a game that has good things in it while also being a total mess, and I mostly enjoyed my time with it. Also the battle music is going to live in my brain for the next several years.

(edit while updating tags years later: I have no idea why I went on a tangent about Nomura when the writing in this is Nojima's fault. Sometimes my brain doesn't work, but I suppose they did do most of those FF games together so most of my issues still stand I guess)

[unpopularly-opinionated]

Started playing the closed beta for this Korean MMO called Lost Ark. Genuinely surprised by how fun of a game it is. I was worried it was going to be like another Black Desert Online which is poorly translated and honestly just a bit overwhelming with all of it’s cluttered UI and different shit going on, but this game is none of those things. I will say if you’re looking for story then it’s so-so. Honestly, I’ve not really been following the story much, but what I’ve gathered is it’s sort of your generic fantasy RPG story.

The gameplay is a lot like Diablo which I personally love, but I will say the look aspect is maybe a little so-so. There is loot, but it’s not particularly interesting loot, hopefully that changes. The main part that I find enjoyable is the combat. I can’t speak for every class, but from what I’ve seen, most classes have 8 skills that you can use all at once, and I believe most classes have like an ultimate ability too, except for mine which I’ll explain in a sec. The progression system is interesting too, you basically earn skill points every time you level up and you can choose to pump them into buffing each individual skill, at certain intervals, if you pump enough points into a skill then you can select another buff for that skill. So there’s a fair amount of customization, and at least in the beta (this could change in release idk) but you can change skill points freely which is always nice.

There’s 5 distinct classes, and then each one is broken down into varying numbers of subclasses. The five classes are Warrior, Mage, Martial Artist, Gunner, and Assassin. I can only speak for the Gunner I’m playing as, and I’m using the Deadeye subclass which is fucking awesome. Instead of 8 skills I basically have 16. At the cost of having an ultimate ability like every other subclass, instead I have the ability to hotswap between three different guns in the middle of combat that each do different things. So I have a shotgun, dual-wield machine pistols, and a rifle. The shotgun is kinda ass ngl, maybe I’m just using it wrong but it doesn’t seem to work too well for me. The dual-wield pistols is sort of the most basic weapon. It does minimal damage but shoots fast, and you have 8 skills for it so it’s where you can use the majority of your skills. The rifle and the shotgun each only have 4 skills associated with them, but boy is the first rifle skill you unlock kind of nutty, at least in the beginning. It’s basically a rail gun shot with a fairly long cool down which makes sense when you consider that it mostly one-shots most enemies.

The really neat thing about this though is I think this level of ‘OP’ is intended because oftentimes you’ll find yourself surrounded by like 50+ enemies which you can kite around to bunch them up into big groups first before shooting them with a fucking rail gun which instantly vaporizes them all at once. It’s so much fun. The rifle also does decent auto-damage and has kinda broken knock back if you ask me because unless the enemy is immune to knock back, nothing can really touch you if you keep hitting them with the rifle.

Anyways, supposedly the game is going to be F2P on-launch which is good I guess. I’m not too sure about monetization yet, since it’s the beta so it’s too early to really say. There is a cash shop in-game already which is kinda eh. I’ve not looked at it really so I can’t say whether it’s P2W or not. I don’t think it is, but don’t take my word for it. The only thing I know you can buy is pets which I think can do various things. You get one early in the game which basically auto-loots for you which is handy, but idk what other pets can do.

Needless to say, I’m playing this all weekend lol