Video Games General

[Rakdos92]

Hey, quick question: the purpose of a 4X game like Endless Space is to expand your territory by colonizing as many planets as possible, right? I'm supposed to grab as many systems as I can, yes? Why is my population so mad about that?

 

[Malcolmo]

Hey, quick question: the purpose of a 4X game like Endless Space is to expand your territory by colonizing as many planets as possible, right? I'm supposed to grab as many systems as I can, yes? Why is my population so mad about that?

Click to shrink...

I've never played it so I can only speak in generalities but in at least one game I've seen in the genre they made starting new cities/colonizing new planets reduce overall happiness as a balancing tool so people couldn't just mass expand early and get a comical lead and had to actually build happiness buildings. In other words a way to slow the game down. Also so it'd be more of a decision on whether to grab marginal worlds/cities or not.

 

[ShogunTrooper]

Hey, quick question: the purpose of a 4X game like Endless Space is to expand your territory by colonizing as many planets as possible, right? I'm supposed to grab as many systems as I can, yes? Why is my population so mad about that?

Click to shrink...

Not just colonize "as many systems as you can" but also adequately build them up, otherwise you are overextending yourself.

You can get more territory later on, once you are firmly established and get to wage some war against your neighbors. The map-painting happens gradually, not immediately.

Remember, the 4X are "Explore, Expand, Exploit, Exterminate".

 

[Faralis]

Hey, quick question: the purpose of a 4X game like Endless Space is to expand your territory by colonizing as many planets as possible, right? I'm supposed to grab as many systems as I can, yes? Why is my population so mad about that?

Click to shrink...

Not just colonize "as many systems as you can" but also adequately build them up, otherwise you are overextending yourself.

You can get more territory later on, once you are firmly established and get to wage some war against your neighbors. The map-painting happens gradually, not immediately.

Remember, the 4X are "Explore, Expand, Exploit, Exterminate".

Click to shrink...

^This, you need to build things and defenses or the pop gets pretty angry, and even then they start getting very snippy when you get too far from your capital, you need to put leaders so they can get less uppity.

Is designed that way to avoid map painting ( not that you stop doing that, in any case ).

 

[Scygnus]

So I've been playing Chronicles of the Wolf. Castlevania homage/knockoff, pulling a lot from SotN as usual.

It's clunky at first, but as you get more movement and weapon options that clears up. Some of the bosses wind up being pure slugfests (looking at you, Next Generation) but most of them only require skill. One of the bosses is money-gated which is bullshit, but once you actually get access to the endgame castle you make so much the cost is chump change.

Two big gripes though.

1: The insta-death rooms. Rooms that just kill you as soon as you go too far into them. Sometimes warning, sometimes not. Thought you were going to start a boss fight? Nope, vampire just ate you. Sliding through a transition hall too fast? Sorry, gorgons in the middle. You usually need some item to cross them, but very rarely do you have much warning and you can easily be halfway across and into the death zone without realizing it. At least have a barrier- a little ledge or something- to slow down a wildly-sliding player. They wouldn't be so bad, if it weren't for-

2: Poor save room placement. I can't stress this one enough. The game is old-school saving. No auto-save, no item-save, nothing. You save at a save room or you die and lose everything. Which isn't that bad...

...if the save rooms were actually placed well. Or indicated on the outside of doors, so you know which of the mysterious exits leads to a save station as soon as you see it and which one leads straight into a boss when you haven't saved in twenty minutes.

No, usually there's no save room within two rooms of the bosses, which makes for an annoying trek when you die and have to try again. There's usually one near every teleport room, but very few are actually adjacent without going through enemies.

In particular I'm complaining about Castle Apcher and the third area opened by a Chaos Coin. Difficult platforming with insta-death traps, not even your various invincibility methods work. Nearest save room is five rooms away, two with enemies. Teleport room is three rooms away so you have to sit through the bwoooooop animation every time you need to try again if you want to use one of the save stations actually adjacent to save rooms. Makes a difficult section really really frustrating with how long it takes to try again. As much as they put in Castle Apcher, they should've had a save room at the entrance.


Other than that it's been pretty fun.

 

[Scygnus]

The Parasite Mutant demo is out on Steam.

...I could swear it was originally Parasite Mutation, so they may have changed the name.

I love the options for a PS1 graphics filter, even though I didn't turn them on.

It's VERY faithful to the Parasite Eve formula... including necessary interactables not being all that obvious sometimes or requiring slightly jank approach and X mashing to find it.

Could use a tiny bit more hint as to what's happening, as the story is pretty vague so far- you were here to retrieve something and it all went to shit. The combat is... okay so far? It's definitely got the 'why am I so slow' that I remember, though you're a bit faster, but so are the enemies. And they seem to like AOEs, though there's been some laser attacks too, but I'm getting the hang of dodging things again, once I actually know what they're going to do. Health items are in short supply, and I have no healing ability yet, so that's tension, but the attacks so far don't really deal all that much damage, even the one miniboss I fought, so it's handleable. The double-gauge system, where you have two ATB gauges and you can attack on one and use items/spells on two, is pretty neat. You can also double-attack, if that more fits your fancy. Bullets are definitely the way to go, though I'm also wary of running out, as it's not as generous with ammo as its predecessor just yet. Being able to reload your gun outside of battle would be nice.

There's a little bit of Guide Dang It but I'm working it out.

Also the one save point I found so far being hidden in a back side room that's not obviously there unless you're checking all the corners (which you should be, but anyway) is a bit strange.

 

[doll]

Hey, quick question: the purpose of a 4X game like Endless Space is to expand your territory by colonizing as many planets as possible, right? I'm supposed to grab as many systems as I can, yes? Why is my population so mad about that?

Click to shrink...

Because Endless Space is a GSG rather than a 4X, fundamentally. What you're running into is the fundamental difference. Systems that mechanically penalize or limit expansion make something into Grand Strategy, 'true' 4X (e.g. MoO, dominions) you're always supposed to expand when able.

Of course many GSGs are just 4X's with some system crudely slapped on top and often the system doesn't stop you, so you normally want to look for a way around playing the way it was intended so you can just expand anyway. ES2 and Stellaris are very much like this, for example (nobody can look at Stellaris patch 2.X robots and deny that that was just turning the game back into a 4X). But in the 'classical' GSG the system makes expansion itself a limited resource (e.g. you cannot have more systems than a limit and that limit increases at a rate largely independent of your economy - paradox games which use Causus Belli or the recent Dune RTS are like this, for example) so while you always want to expand when able usually your option to do so is limited.

Approval penalties are basically a soft implementation of the cap.