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Video Games General

Woah, came across a Tales of Maj'Eyal video in the wild



guess it's time to reinstall it again...

edit: well, maybe wasn't the best video ever made lol, but a starving man in a desert coming up to a puddle?
 
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Yeah, they've gone well and truly gone beyond what's necessary. Do they even have any games other than NMS? I feel they should be making money from this.
The most recent thing they've done is "The Last Campfire" but they also have their new game in the works "Light No Fire" which a lot of the current dev work we're seeing in NMS is somewhat related to from what I understand.
 
So Yooka-Replaylee is now out and... They actually fixed issues in the game and enhanced it? That is good to know.
 
So Yooka-Replaylee is now out and... They actually fixed issues in the game and enhanced it? That is good to know.
It looks like they actually added new issues by overcompensating. The difficulty is very low, partially because of how all movement tech is available from the start (which also makes the game much shorter bc less backtracking), and the note-door equivalents weren't adjusted to account for the doubled number of Pagies. If you clear everything in world 1, you can completely skip world 2.
 
combat mission shock force
Huh, this looks interest- holy shit those DLC prices are ridiculous. Far from the worst, but still...

Anyways, I've played a bit of Skate (the 2007 one, not the new one) and holy shit I suck. Most of it is just my lack of experience, but I think the camera angle is fucking me up a bit, too. Also, I can't flick the right stick precisely enough most of the time and do the wrong tricks. I was stuck on one of the tutorials for like 20 minutes because I somehow kept doing ollies instead of kickfliping into grinds lmao
 
Huh, this looks interest- holy shit those DLC prices are ridiculous. Far from the worst, but still...

Anyways, I've played a bit of Skate (the 2007 one, not the new one) and holy shit I suck. Most of it is just my lack of experience, but I think the camera angle is fucking me up a bit, too. Also, I can't flick the right stick precisely enough most of the time and do the wrong tricks. I was stuck on one of the tutorials for like 20 minutes because I somehow kept doing ollies instead of kickfliping into grinds lmao
Yeah, that's combat mission for ya. Ran by a bunch of gigaboomers.
I have a big love for early cold war gone hot, early 80s to late 70s when Warsaw Pact was at its strongest
 
Yeah, they've gone well and truly gone beyond what's necessary. Do they even have any games other than NMS? I feel they should be making money from this.
They do, there's another game thats very similar they're making. Once they get a feature for that game complete enough they backport it to NMS for live testing.
 
Alright, some news that might be of interest to peeps here:

1) Let it Die has an official sequel coming out in December 2025.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMwZTM3dJMU
For those unfamiliar with the setting, it's a Soulslike set in a post-apocalyptic world that has managed to recover from the catastrophe enough that they started developing consoles and stuff. That's a plotpoint because Suda51 is metatextual like that. Anyway, you played as a dude invited by Uncle Death (that's the Grim Reaper dude with the funky sunglasses and skateboard) to play a game where you control a zombie to climb a tower.

The sequel likely has a similiar setup, with your protag playing various zombies as classes to descend into the circles of Hell (sorta) and plunder it for great profit. LiD1 was a unique game and I enjoyed it despite its various flaws. My hope is that the devs improved on movesets and mobility.

2) I stumbled over a trailer for a game called Death in Abyss. Despite what you might think, it has no relation to Made in Abyss.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWLXedfbEN0
Now the reason why I share this trailer is because the gameplay really reminds me of Star Fox, especially the All-Range Mode. As you can see from the video, the fighter also performs barrel rolls (yes, I know, not the right term) and even the UI resembles Star Fox's. I suspect there will be charged shots and smartbombs too. I'm gonna check it out sometime, see if my hopes are true.

3) Lastly, I'd like to recommend Acecraft to anyone interested in a game for their smartphone.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krwZhm6Q7nI
It's a shoot'em'up styled after (stolen from, more like) Cuphead where you pick a pilot with their custom fighter (One pilot has a jetpack and fires by clapping real hard) and then go down to town on various bad guys. The game is decent enough in giving you resources to roll the dice. I haven't paid a single cent for any of the pilots or Wingmen, but still unlocked like two thirds of the cast by now. While the difficulty increase rapidly, that just means you need to upgrade equipment and pilot skills, both of which get upgraded fast thanks to various QoL utilities like Patrol where your pilot farms coins, fuel, and equipment upgrade material for up to 24 hours. So far I have not ran into the usual issue of power creep yet, so... all in all, it's a charming little game to pass the time and I can recommend it.
 
Heights aren't quite as bad as Nightscraper... but Dreddstag is still somehow worse. He's bigger, he's got more weak points, and despite the fact that he barely fights back- just trying to swat you like a fly occasionally- he feels harder. Partly because his climbing paths are a fucking maze and your stamina only lasts so long. If you can't spot the right path or grapple point, you fall and start from the last platform.

AND HE WON'T QUIT FUCKING WIGGLING!

He's ALWAYS moving at least a bit, and sometimes a lot. It's VERY annoying when you're trying to climb while he's doing that, and if you just hold on, your stamina is fucked. Stopping on a platform works, but I never think of that because it feels like it really, really shouldn't- and he tends to do it while you're halfway to the next one anyway.

At least the one time I actually died, trying to figure out where the heck the next grapple point was, it brought me back to where I was instead of making me start all over.

When I fought Nightscraper, the swears were from fear. Dreddstag just pissed me off.

His first phase is also ridiculously unclear. I'm still not sure what made the tether between his ankles finally bring him down- he might've needed to be in a particular section of the ground part to actually fall maybe? It was frustrating chasing him around until he did, shooting rope after rope at his ankles.

Now all the Behemoths are dead and I can ride off into the sunset!

...Ha, no.

They could've made it a LITTLE less clear which one's the villain. When you're chasing down Dreddstag it becomes abundantly obvious. The uncertainty would've had a better payoff if it was still unclear when you have to choose who to trust.

The writing was actually pretty good up to that point, for what little of it there is.
 
So I found this game by chance and my god is it amazing:


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xnd5JH9mjNU

You got an amazing 90s anime art aesthetic and the witty writing style to match, mixed with a DBZ style fighting system where words have literal power, and somehow make it work as an episodic rogue-like with a risk-reward system. Being honorable and merciful on an enemy's last legs give you perks that make the rest of the episode better, and you get honor which is an upgrade source to permanently boost yourself after an "episode". And no, bosses don't have that honor system.

I beat the first level/episode on a normal run, and then tried again on a randomized challenge. Got my ass handed to me. It really tests your limits of management on words and how to enhance them for combos. I fully recommend it.
 
I was blind and now I see. Shit, explanation time.

Heroes of Might and Magic (HoMM) series. As a kid I played base 5th game and it's 2 expansions (they really add to the spell system making the gameplay even better. Really my main draw the first time I saw the game at a friend's house was the spellcasting).

Loved it, played and replayed the shit out of it till I got through all the campaigns (jumping from simplicity of Pokémon to juggling resources, time, turn based distances between me and enemies on macro map and battlefields, unit (lack)morale and luck(unlucky) and what skills were worth picking, shit or so damned OP I wouldn't have to think much after their final skill level -stat numbers go brrr with Expert Enlightenment - was a big thing for me in single digit age range and a lot was just trial and error). After this shit Fire Emblem games were a breeze (even with Roy).

Two days ago in the evening I get nostalgic and get Heroes 5 on GoG (good old games. Only issue I noticed so far is Maahir's Gambit custom campaign Arena bonuses didn't do shit they were supposed to when I clicked their bonus selection but got greyed out as if my hero did get stat bonuses that he didn't) and I see Heroes 3 offered for cheap too and Hero3 fans can be obnoxiously loud and many in the community about how this is the peak.

So I take it to see for myself. Then mission 1 already I had to do a lot of looking up everything. Because it is a very different beast to play this compared to my cozy replay of 5.

Starting impression.

What are these skills and divisions? Why the fuck is my hero at turtle speed despite logistics? Magic is near worthless, can only be cast a few times and mana points don't regen unless (found this one by luck) I spend a turn change uselessly dangling at the castle or spend skill slot on the slow ass mysticism skill -it gets to 5 mana a day if you spend 3 level ups on it-? What the hell is going on?

The enchanting library of knowledge online revealing to me where I get fucked and how to mitigate most of the problems I experienced.

The movement is fucked up ( don't lug army units with speed less than 4 or lose movement capacity for the day? Don't move diagonally if you can avoid it because it's extra steps spent silently? Logistics and Pathfinding are separate things and not really worth it for the main hero? Don't pick resources and mines with a main hero, absolutely must get a second exclusively for that and aforementioned movement skills because skill total is only 8 and every skill is separate? After all this you squeeze out a minor distance improvement that might let you win the blatantly cheating computer? What the fuck is this shit?)

To paraphrase what Sseth said in his video review of 5, what happened to my fucking magic? The cost is prohibitive, even with map opportunities raising spell power(potency) and knowledge (mana reserves. You can have magic you cannot cast for example) is a bitch.

Its split among elements fine, but it takes skill Wisdom (Basic to learn level 3 spells, Advanced for level 4 and Expert for level 5) and Magic school skills just lower casting cost a bit and strengthen spells to work what you have but the fucked up thing is the following.

Magic Arrow (aka missile the basic bitch offensive spell) shows under whatever magic school your mage guilds building predominantly offers (I start at human campaign so that is water apparently. My second is a Barbarian hero which is relevant because Barbarians don't learn water spells so buying her the spell book is just to maker her look smart cause her 10 mana points ass can't do anything in a fight -unlike 5 heroes in 3 only get to cast spells and not their own attack opportunity in case your hero is might oriented- and she didn't even get the one offensive magic or anything but the shit Disguise spell at a shrine that just muddles up your info to enemy scouting heroes).

Yes, the maps offer stat up opportunities and spending money and movement on those is worth it. If you can avoid triggering the win condition which is sometimes as loose as getting a specific artifact and an enemy hero passing you by triggers your desire to crush a roach and accidentally get the said artifact which means you missed half the stat boosts with every hero (nobody can go everywhere all at once in early missions, god the normie movement is shit and I haven't seen a shadow of the fabled town portal and dimensional door spells yet) and are now going half cocked into next mission. Potentially you reload and realise you saved like 10 turns ago and are now in a timeline where results aren't there anymore and you have no idea where to even begin retracing your good steps taken.

Online advice is nearly nonexistent. Lot of the old hands cream over fan made "improvements" in Horn of the Abyss where onto the most broken build they can conceive of with movement and set of actions that must be micromanaged to the last step can outpace the now godlike computer conditions to win by a step taken, a single unit "preserved" on its last soldier surviving.

I am a lot more casual. In fact, I'd prefer there being multiple ways of beating the game instead of save scumming from dozens to thousands of times (with 5-10 different time point save files recommended mind you) before I luck out into winning after learning the computers responses to my actions by heart.

Why is Necromancy the only special one and ultra special at that? They raise units as undead. This game is unit heavy and most of what can be done lies in units power.

You know what any other race gets? Nothing.

Stuff wasn't balanced in 5 either, but there I could maneuver (Humans could turn 10~20 footmen into Champions aka shonen jumping mid mooks to protag tier every week, Mages could make items of fuck you for units so like your lightning throwing Titan stack can also shave off enemy defenses every time it attacks and it's turns come up faster too, dark elf Warlocks could laugh at magic resistant units, Elves made luck more broken etc ) with my heroes own racial bullshit.

It really is about what game draws you into HoMM franchise, because the graphics are shit and music is tolerable and only comparison helps as looking up videos of people playing 4 nearly made me wanna puke from how disgusting the graphics are (also, 4 is more like a book with all the long narration unlike 3 and 5 just setting up the story in a few minutes and feeding you bits at every mission progress relevant time which isn't often).

Wow, that went long. Anyways I wanna know the story behind this bullshit and will only look up game story online if the bullshit becomes too much to play through.
 

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