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Video Games General

The fact that this wasn't shown in the direct
 
So, gotta report: Triangle Strategy is HARD.

If you think you can YOLO with one unit against the generic? The foes will own your ass.

If you suffer the misery of being flanked or good forbid, caught in a pincer, GOOD LUCK.

The game has this nifty feature about if you hit a foe and one of your (non-archer) ally is on the opposite side, they geta free hit in too. And if it's a back attack, it's an automatic critical hit. And your foes are not shy about using that, nor about using skills themselves.
 
Megaolix said:
So, gotta report: Triangle Strategy is HARD.

If you think you can YOLO with one unit against the generic? The foes will own your ass.

If you suffer the misery of being flanked or good forbid, caught in a pincer, GOOD LUCK.

The game has this nifty feature about if you hit a foe and one of your (non-archer) ally is on the opposite side, they geta free hit in too. And if it's a back attack, it's an automatic critical hit. And your foes are not shy about using that, nor about using skills themselves.
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How's the game so far? Would you recommend getting it or say wait for a sale?
 
Bone Daddy said:
How's the game so far? Would you recommend getting it or say wait for a sale?
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There IS a demo with the first 3 chapters, if you want to try it and see if it's your cup of tea, you know?

And the saves can be transferred if you buy it.

So far, I am enjoying it. I don't want to make a final opinion yet, however.
 
Megaolix said:
There IS a demo with the first 3 chapters, if you want to try it and see if it's your cup of tea, you know?

And the saves can be transferred if you buy it.

So far, I am enjoying it. I don't want to make a final opinion yet, however.
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I know, I've been distracted by finishing up Monster Sanctuary before giving it a try. From the reviews I've seen of the demo it says that it's like 80% story and 20% gameplay so I also don't want to get biased from that.
 
Bone Daddy said:
I know, I've been distracted by finishing up Monster Sanctuary before giving it a try. From the reviews I've seen of the demo it says that it's like 80% story and 20% gameplay so I also don't want to get biased from that.
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You are not wrapping up battles easy. At least on your first run.

The game DEFINITELY force you to think about tactics here, so I would say it gives it good credit. But honestly, the best way to see if you want it remain to play the demo and see for yourself.
 
So, I've started playing Bloodborne (my first souls game) and it's pretty fun so far (just beat the first boss), though I have some concerns from what I've picked up on the internet.

First of all, I hear it's VERY easy to lose the chance of a quest line if you progress too far, or miss a hidden trigger/action. I'm thinking of following a guide, but I want someone else's thoughts on it before I commit.

Secondly, I really do not get why there's so much backtracking for boss fights. I mean, I beat the Cleric Beast on my first try (which doesn't say much, with my 20 blood vials), but throughout that entire fight, I was worried about getting back there if I die.

Let's assume the route from the Central Yharnam Lamp to the Cleric Beast is about 3 to 5 minutes. That's already WAY too long to wait in between boss attempts, but that's not accounting for the difficulty getting there. I count 4 enemy encounters that have a chance of killing me, one requiring molotov cocktails. So in reality, it could take 10 minutes in between attempts that can have me lose my edge or dull insights I had.

The last thing I'm not so much concerned about, but resigned to, is a lack of investment in the story. It seems that Bloodborne isn't a linear story, but one told through hints, item descriptions, and other scattered lore. I mean, I can check out YouTube videos of the lore, which would be kind of interesting, but not a compelling story, with no characters to breathe life into it.

I want some thoughts on how to manage these concerns, because I'm very much enjoying the game and I don't want anything to hamper my experience with it.
 
NameOrdane said:
So, I've started playing Bloodborne (my first souls game) and it's pretty fun so far (just beat the first boss), though I have some concerns from what I've picked up on the internet.

First of all, I hear it's VERY easy to lose the chance of a quest line if you progress too far, or miss a hidden trigger/action. I'm thinking of following a guide, but I want someone else's thoughts on it before I commit.
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That can happen sometimes, though it's pretty much only in regards to NPC side quests rather than anything critical to progress. Generally speaking, just make sure you are constantly talking to NPCs as you come across them, and you should be fine. Some of the games in this series have some bullshit you need to do to avoid being locked out of some of the endings (Dark Souls 3's Lord of Hollows ending comes to mind) but with Bloodborne, the two main endings are pretty much determined by a single choice you make at the end of the game. There's a third ending that is determined by if you have a certain amount of a certain item, but even if you do want to go for that ending first, that item isn't too hard to get, so I wouldn't worry too much about it.

NameOrdane said:
Secondly, I really do not get why there's so much backtracking for boss fights. I mean, I beat the Cleric Beast on my first try (which doesn't say much, with my 20 blood vials), but throughout that entire fight, I was worried about getting back there if I die.

Let's assume the route from the Central Yharnam Lamp to the Cleric Beast is about 3 to 5 minutes. That's already WAY too long to wait in between boss attempts, but that's not accounting for the difficulty getting there. I count 4 enemy encounters that have a chance of killing me, one requiring molotov cocktails. So in reality, it could take 10 minutes in between attempts that can have me lose my edge or dull insights I had.
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In regards to this one, there's a few things to take into account. First is that Cleric Beast, despite being the first boss, is not actually required for pure progression. A lot of the bosses are a bit closer to bonfires/lanterns, or at least you can find shortcuts to reduce the distance. Without spoiling too much for example, the next boss, Father Gascoigne, is required to progress, and there's a shortcut elevator you can find near the fogdoor leading to his boss fight that leads pretty close to one of the lanterns, allowing you to skip most of the time and enemies you had to deal with to get to him in the first place.

Also, a lot of the time with Souls games, when it comes to quickly getting to bosses, it can often be best to just deliberately run past enemies instead of bothering to fight them time after time again, which could likely save some time too. Don't know if you've tried that though.

NameOrdane said:
The last thing I'm not so much concerned about, but resigned to, is a lack of investment in the story. It seems that Bloodborne isn't a linear story, but one told through hints, item descriptions, and other scattered lore. I mean, I can check out YouTube videos of the lore, which would be kind of interesting, but not a compelling story, with no characters to breathe life into it.

I want some thoughts on how to manage these concerns, because I'm very much enjoying the game and I don't want anything to hamper my experience with it.
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This one is a fair thing to complain about admittedly. The way that the games tend to keep lore obscure and open to interpretation is something that I don't mind too much, but I can certainly understand that someone trying to get concrete answers for the story might be annoyed. There's a reason why one joke I've heard about these games is that understanding the story requires waiting at least a few months after release and then subscribing to VaatiVidya to listen to him explain the plot and characters. Unfortunately, for better or worse, it's something that's been baked into the franchise since Demon Souls first dropped, and I doubt From is going to change that going forward.
 
NameOrdane said:
So, I've started playing Bloodborne (my first souls game) and it's pretty fun so far (just beat the first boss), though I have some concerns from what I've picked up on the internet.

First of all, I hear it's VERY easy to lose the chance of a quest line if you progress too far, or miss a hidden trigger/action. I'm thinking of following a guide, but I want someone else's thoughts on it before I commit.
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Yeah, that can happen. I have somewhere around 100 hours in Bloodborne and never did the Patches quest line, though I learned he was in the game after my first couple playthroughs. Considering there are multiple endings, you're expected to play through the game more than once and pick up or do stuff you missed. Considering how old the game is, I'm assuming you don't care about doing a blind run just to experience the game the first time, so a guide for quests is fair. I don't think most people would begrudge you that.

NameOrdane said:
Secondly, I really do not get why there's so much backtracking for boss fights. I mean, I beat the Cleric Beast on my first try (which doesn't say much, with my 20 blood vials), but throughout that entire fight, I was worried about getting back there if I die.

Let's assume the route from the Central Yharnam Lamp to the Cleric Beast is about 3 to 5 minutes. That's already WAY too long to wait in between boss attempts, but that's not accounting for the difficulty getting there. I count 4 enemy encounters that have a chance of killing me, one requiring molotov cocktails. So in reality, it could take 10 minutes in between attempts that can have me lose my edge or dull insights I had.
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From Software games (minus a few) are built on interconnected areas that loop in on themselves. You're going to find multiple short cuts in the area. The cleric beast, for example. I'm sure you noticed the stairs off the left of the bridge when you're approaching. There's like two shortcuts through that house. Expect a lot of that. More areas are built like that than not.

Also, you can run past enemies with little issue. Sometimes they can get a lucky shot in, but you're generally faster than they are so if you know where they are you can just dash by with little to no issues.

NameOrdane said:
The last thing I'm not so much concerned about, but resigned to, is a lack of investment in the story. It seems that Bloodborne isn't a linear story, but one told through hints, item descriptions, and other scattered lore. I mean, I can check out YouTube videos of the lore, which would be kind of interesting, but not a compelling story, with no characters to breathe life into it.

I want some thoughts on how to manage these concerns, because I'm very much enjoying the game and I don't want anything to hamper my experience with it.
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Sorry to say, but From Soft games are all built on environmental and background storytelling. That's mostly in part because the player doesn't show up until decades or even centuries after everything has gone down, though Bloodborne is unique in that the Hunt is something that happens often. Outside of a cursory "This is why you're here and this is your goal", you won't get much in the way of explanation of the world around you from other characters. I've never considered it a negative, but I can understand that some people aren't into that.
 
Since we're kinda on Dark Souls, how does the leveling system work and are the bosses scaled to your level? I ask because Soulsborne games are known to be built to be difficult to beat and since Dark Souls is the 'modern' standard by which other games are compared to when they are difficult... I'd figure there is some straight bullshit waiting for me when I start the game.
 
Velk said:
Since we're kinda on Dark Souls, how does the leveling system work and are the bosses scaled to your level? I ask because Soulsborne games are known to be built to be difficult to beat and since Dark Souls is the 'modern' standard by which other games are compared to when they are difficult... I'd figure there is some straight bullshit waiting for me when I start the game.
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Leveling system is pretty simple. You have your usual stat spread you'd see in an RPG with health, endurance, strength, dex, int, faith, luck, etc. The soft cap, where you start getting diminishing returns, is usually around 40 points in each stat, though nothing stops you from leveling something to 99. The level cap is ridiculously high, over 500, so if you don't care about PVP you don't really need to worry about that. Stats effect which weapons you can use and how much damage they do. So rapiers and daggers do more damage the higher your dex stat while greatswords scale with strength. That's pretty much the basics.

Bosses are not scaled to your level. They have a set level and you're generally going to be about on par with them by the time you reach them. Optional early game bosses will be stomped with ease if you have late game gear. Similarly, there's no required level to face a boss. They're all beatable at level 1 if you know how to fight the boss. As for bullshit, some of the games have more of it than others (DS2 has the most), but the game doesn't go out of it's way to be bullshit. It's mostly pretty fair and half the difficulty is just learning the enemies and area.
 
Velk said:
Since we're kinda on Dark Souls, how does the leveling system work and are the bosses scaled to your level? I ask because Soulsborne games are known to be built to be difficult to beat and since Dark Souls is the 'modern' standard by which other games are compared to when they are difficult... I'd figure there is some straight bullshit waiting for me when I start the game.
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Enemies and bosses do not scale to your level. Their stats are the same regardless, so if a given area or boss is giving you trouble, there's no shame in simply grinding the enemies for souls to level yourself up a bunch and then come back for anouther go. This is true for all the games in the franchise, as far as I am aware.



As for how leveling works, it's reletively straightforward but has some nuances all the same: Each time you kill an enemy, you get a certain amount of souls. These souls can be used either as currency to buy stuff with, or you can use them to level up, either at a bonfire (in Dark Souls 1 and Elden Ring) or at the Shrine Maiden/Plain Doll (in Dark Souls 2, 3, and Bloodborne), though the cost for leveling up increases each time you do it. The caveat is that if you die, you lose however many souls you have on you, but you can recover them if you go back to the area you died at.

Further mitigating this is how you will occasionally find soul items that you store in your inventory and can use to give yourself some souls based on the value of the item, right when you're at the point where you're going to spend them there and then, without worrying about enemies killing you. Going off the Dark Souls wiki, it starts at 200 souls for the smallest type, to 20,000 for the most valuable.



Combine all of the above with how non-boss enemies respawn infinitely whenever you rest at a bonfire, and it's perfectly viable to level yourself up beyond the point that the game "intends" you to be at in a given area. For reference, most of the time in the games, you'll probably end up getting to the final boss by the time you're in the range of level 100-150 or so at least, but there's nothing stopping you from going well beyond that point. Hypothetically, someone in DS3 who was really determined could just farm early game enemies and get all their stats to 99, at level 802, before they even got to the first boss. That would be insane, and probably take literal days, if not weeks, of doing nothing but grinding to pull it off, but it's hypothetically possible.
 
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Both posts allays my fears relatively well, I was expecting.... bullshit based on how people talk about the game being so hard. It looks like the main difficulty is the leaning curve for the Area, the Enemies and The Boss more than any 'you need to be this tall' bullshit.
 
Velk said:
Both posts allays my fears relatively well, I was expecting.... bullshit based on how people talk about the game being so hard. It looks like the main difficulty is the leaning curve for the Area, the Enemies and The Boss more than any 'you need to be this tall' bullshit.
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That's pretty much the case. Soulsborne games basically make it's combat unforgiving if you screw up, but at the same time, they also balance it out by making it so that dying in these games is utterly meaningless.

Worst case scenario, if you get killed by a boss, regular enemy, a bottomless pit, or anouther player who invaded you, the only thing you will lose is your souls, but 1) those souls can be recovered as long as you get to the place you died without dying a second time, and 2) even if you do die again and lose those souls permanently, you can simply earn those souls back again just by farming enemies. The main time you'd ever really have tons of souls lying around while being low on health and/or healing items is likely after killing a boss, but these games are also pretty good about making it so killing a boss spawns a bonfire directly afterwards, so that's not a huge concern either since you can just go and spend those souls you just earned right there and then. Notably any item in your inventory other than those souls, be it weapons, armor, quest related items, or anything else, do not get affected by your death, so really all dying in a Soulsborne game does is cost you a bit of time and your own willingness to persevere.

In that sense, at least in the Dark Souls games, the way the Dark Sign and the Curse of Undead works is that you can keep coming back to life after you die, but you lose a bit of yourself each time unless you can hold on to your sense of self and your purpose in life. If you can't, you eventually turn hollow and become a mindless zombie. However it doesn't ever affect the player character for one simple reason: Because your ability to not go hollow is tied to your determination and perseverance to keep going no matter what. As long as you, the player, are willing to keep pressing forward by continuing to play the game, your character won't go hollow, simple as that.
 
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Is there a way to mass download dlc on steam? I bought a bunch of dlc for different games during the Winter Sale but didn't download them at the time because I wanted to get another hardrive and move a few big games first to free up space. Is my only option to go through and verify local files for each game to make sure the DLC downloads?
 
So been playing elden ring. Fun game, might have to upgrade my pc because it keeps jittering in places guess who just figued out the damn thing has a legitmate tutorial after 5 hours into the game?
 
Drak4806 said:
Is there a way to mass download dlc on steam? I bought a bunch of dlc for different games during the Winter Sale but didn't download them at the time because I wanted to get another hardrive and move a few big games first to free up space. Is my only option to go through and verify local files for each game to make sure the DLC downloads?
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Right click game on Library list, Properties, DLC section from the left, tick the DLC you want to download and install. I don't think there's a way to do that en masse though.
 
Skyrim Switch question: What is the chance to get one of the LoZ pieces of equipment from Amiibos? I kinda want to role-play as Dark Link in Skyrim.

I've heard it's twenty percent, but I'm already a few chests in and I got nothing.

Edit: Also, is it every 24-hours I can use the same amiibo on a game or once a day?
 
The-Lewd-Dude said:
So been playing elden ring. Fun game, might have to upgrade my pc because it keeps jittering in places guess who just figued out the damn thing has a legitmate tutorial after 5 hours into the game?
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Yeah, I saw that complaint a lot. The tutorial is really easy to miss because it requires you to jump down a hole and a lot of people, both new and veteran players, don't trust the NPC or the sign saying "Jump down the hole to gain knowledge" or just walk past them entirely. I only jumped down there because I saw the jump was survivable and I got curious about what was in the hole.
 
Okay, so update on the Bloodborne thing. I just got kidnapped to Yahar'gul 30 minutes ago after killing the blood starved beast and I'm very concerned about soft locking my game. Where you respawn there isn't a Lamp to the Hunter's Dream, so I can't repair my weapon. I didn't buy a second weapon, so if my 136/200 Saw Cleaver breaks, is that it for me?

Also, the mage enemies in this area are REALLY tough. I haven't managed to kill one, even if I fight one on one, and I just run past them because of how slow they are. Is this the right method, or should I 'git gud'?

Next, in one of the areas I've managed to skedaddle to is a really tough boss called 'Darkbeast Daarl'. Is this the boss I have to kill to get back Hunter's Dream, or is there another way? Because if I do have to kill it, I don't think I'll succeed before my weapon breaks.
 
NameOrdane said:
Okay, so update on the Bloodborne thing. I just got kidnapped to Yahar'gul 30 minutes ago after killing the blood starved beast and I'm very concerned about soft locking my game. Where you respawn there isn't a Lamp to the Hunter's Dream, so I can't repair my weapon. I didn't buy a second weapon, so if my 136/200 Saw Cleaver breaks, is that it for me?

Also, the mage enemies in this area are REALLY tough. I haven't managed to kill one, even if I fight one on one, and I just run past them because of how slow they are. Is this the right method, or should I 'git gud'?

Next, in one of the areas I've managed to skedaddle to is a really tough boss called 'Darkbeast Daarl'. Is this the boss I have to kill to get back Hunter's Dream, or is there another way? Because if I do have to kill it, I don't think I'll succeed before my weapon breaks.
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There's another lantern nearby that'll let you leave the area, actually. Gotta go up a few sets of stairs from your jail cell to find it though. You don't even leave that first building to find it.

Killling Paarl's an option - killing a boss almost always pops a lantern - but there is an easier way, yeah.
 
Anonnermus said:
There's another lantern nearby that'll let you leave the area, actually. Gotta go up a few sets of stairs from your jail cell to find it though.

Killling Paarl's an option - killing a boss almost always pops a lantern - but there is an easier way, yeah.
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Thanks, was genuinely worried about losing my playthrough there.
 
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