Video Games General

[D'znn-Xy'lll MetaChthonia]

As per Rule 8 Point 3: If in your Opinion my Post in any capacity, shape, and/or form Violates Rule 5, 8, or 9 then inform me so I may Delete the Post. Check Signature for further elaboration. Assistance is appreciated. Asking about the Content Disclaimer will be treated as being Informed of a Rule 5 Violation on my part.

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Does anyone have recommendations for games where you play as a modern urban fantasy wizard? Like Mage: The Awakening or the Nasuverse or The Dresden Files, not Harry Potter.

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[Joke]
Lego Harry Potter
[/Joke]
... in seriousness Harry Potter is just a discount Isekai LARPing as a Modern Urban Fantasy.

Uh there's Tactical Breech Wizards?

Save 45% on Tactical Breach Wizards on Steam

In Tactical Breach Wizards, you lead a team of renegade wizards in kevlar through turn-based battles to unravel a modern conspiracy plot. Combine their unique spells in clever ways, or rewind time to try every crazy plan you can think of to punch a Traffic Warlock through a 4th story window.

store.steampowered.com

 

[Raven1138]

Can recommend TBW. Actually does a semi-decent job of creating a Harry Potter as written by Tom Clancy setup and you quickly discover the best spell is "Yeet the Tango out the nearest window."

 

[Vague Wanderer]

Will second Tactical Breach Wizards. Great writing and great world building, along with copious amounts of defenestration. Fun game.

More generally, for Urban Fantasy...well, there's Control, but that's less Dresden and more legally distinct SCP with psychic powers. Ghostwire Tokyo isn't bad, though that's mostly just blasting ghosts in a bit of Tokyo after spooky shit happened; there's not much variety in gameplay there. There's the Dishonored games as well, but those aren't a modern setting.

Ironically, Cyberpunk 2077 may be the closest thing gameplay wise given Netrunning is basically magic there, but that's really not what you meant, I think.

 

[vyor]

I'm planning on making an urban fantasy cyberpunk game.

But that won't be ready for like a decade from now so...

 

[Delta/Soul]

I need assistance in finding the video game that I am trying to find. Here is my question from before:

I am trying to remember/look for a video game where the player is given the option of choosing a mech to pilot but the character models are mostly female (there is only one male in game) and the game is pretty risqué but not full on nsfw. And the characters pilot their Mecha without the cockpit covering them. Does that sound familiar to anyone?

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[Malcolmo]

I need assistance in finding the video game that I am trying to find. Here is my question from before:

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What was the gameplay like and what were the graphics like? Because just mecha doesn't really help when it comes to finding stuff like that. Was it some variety of strategy or was it more armored core style?

 

[Anonnermus]

Does anyone have recommendations for games where you play as a modern urban fantasy wizard? Like Mage: The Awakening or the Nasuverse or The Dresden Files, not Harry Potter.

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I've been thinking about this one for a little and the only answers I can come up with come in the form of visual novels, mostly the Nasu stuff. The closest other thing I could think of myself is playing VtM:Bloodlines as a Tremere. Modern Urban Fantasy Wizard Video Gaming seems like something of an untapped market.

I actually hit the google AI search on this, looking for a list of 20 modern urban fantasy wizard video games and it all but immediately broke out of that specification with a list of 21 games to try and make up for the fact most of them weren't about wizards (I would maybe somewhat agree that Yakuza is a modern urban fantasy video game series but it doesn't really have wizards). It brought up Tactical Breach Wizards, as others here already had but I don't know it myself.

For something others haven't brought up already, there's the Shadowrun RPGs. Being a mage/Awakened is an option with it's own dialog options and such available to such a character but it's not central to any of the plots and Shadowrun itself isn't quite a modern setting.

 

[Delta/Soul]

What was the gameplay like and what were the graphics like? Because just mecha doesn't really help when it comes to finding stuff like that. Was it some variety of strategy or was it more armored core style?

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I never got a chance to play it, but I did see videos.

I think it was a the usual Japanese game.

The female characters weren't inside of the mecha in a traditional sense. They were the face of the mecha.

 

[Malcolmo]

I never got a chance to play it, but I did see videos.

I think it was a the usual Japanese game.

The female characters weren't inside of the mecha in a traditional sense. They were the face of the mecha.

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Imma be honest, with that little information it's not exactly going to be easy to find out anything about it. My suggestion is to try feeding what details you know to google's search ai, the thing is genuinely not that bad at chasing down games from details since you can chain them together or at least offering suggestions of what it could be if you keep telling it stuff to narrow the search.

 

[vyor]

Heads up: Horseshoes, Hotdogs, and Hand Grenades is completely and totally unplayable with PSVR2 controllers. Several weapons outright do not function.

 

[D'znn-Xy'lll MetaChthonia]

As per Rule 8 Point 3: If in your Opinion my Post in any capacity, shape, and/or form Violates Rule 5, 8, or 9 then inform me so I may Delete the Post. Check Signature for further elaboration. Assistance is appreciated. Asking about the Content Disclaimer will be treated as being Informed of a Rule 5 Violation on my part.

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I feel like Recommending another Game:
Cairn
Don't have it but can still recommend it. It's a mountain climbing Game with optional survival elements. You climb a mountain. There's a DLC where you climb other things that aren't that mountain which collectively are half as big as the mountain (not from the size of the DLC maps but the size of the Base Game mountain). This mountain has individual maps on it Referencing Real World climbing locations. It's also Open World btw. The only Fast Travel is jumping off the mountain and Fast Traveling to Aava's death. It's also really forgiving and actively accommodating about the climb (but it's not going to hand you everything) while encouraging you to move slow and take your time.
Plot:
You're Playing as Aava, world famous climber in a semi-scifi world (just from the start you have self screwing pitons and a robot that can both retrieve them, turn plastic into chalk (through "composting"), and repair pitons that break). Her goal is to climb Kami, a supposedly unclimbable mountain previously home to the Troglodyte Civilization. Along the way the real Reason for her climbing the mountain is unveiled and she meets both people who chose to seclude themselves as far from other people as possible and the corpses of those who died trying the same as her. There's multiple Endings. One Aava becomes yet another failure, one Aava becomes yet another corpse.

Heads up: Horseshoes, Hotdogs, and Hand Grenades is completely and totally unplayable with PSVR2 controllers. Several weapons outright do not function.

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Lucky me it's VR. My Experience with VR actually predates its commercial selling. Can't do VR even if I had space in my home for it.

Storytime with Meta:
One of my birthdays when I was a polyp was at mega-arcade that had some surface façade of a generic arcade while the basement area was this layered massive one that- You Know the Pizzaplex from that newish Five Nights? Imagine that but underground and everything is crowded into layers you sometimes can see through to higher layers but can never see the ceiling from the bottom floor. One of the balcony areas had this VR set up. Was my first Experience with VR. Hated it ever since and seeing Videos of it on YouTube can make me nausous.

 

[ForestDweller]

Playing through the demo for Echoes of Aincrad. So far its covering the tutorial/prologue which appropriately takes place in the beta test. There is definitely an appreciation for detail from the devs, they are clearly fans. The menu is in fact the in game SAO menu complete with logout button, which you can't actually use but I like that they added it solely to take it away later when the main plot actually starts. At the end of the starting tutorial dungeon you fight Illfang, which is a little weird since he's the floor boss, not a dungeon one, but yeah, i'm guessing they will justify it somehow. Also, he decidedly was not using a Nodachi, though he also wasn't using a Tulwar but that might just be the devs not knowing what a Tulwar looks like.

So far I'm having fun. While I actually like Kirito as a character (and man does the anime do a poor job with his internal monologue), its nice playing someone who isn't him and can see the Beater/Black Swordsman from the outside when the time comes.

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Been playing the demo myself and man I wish it's closer to a Soulsborne game. The levels are too big with a bunch of trash harassing you and the combat doesn't feel good.

The art and visual are pretty good on the other hand. And I can get behind the story.

I won't be buying it most likely.

 

[Melmar]

Been playing the demo myself and man I wish it's closer to a Soulsborne game. The levels are too big with a bunch of trash harassing you and the combat doesn't feel good.

The art and visual are pretty good on the other hand. And I can get behind the story.

I won't be buying it most likely.

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I remember thinking the combat desperately needed more sense of impact. Regardless of how much damage you're dealing, it's got that hitting them with a pool noodle feeling even when using a heavy weapon.

 

[D'znn-Xy'lll MetaChthonia]

As per Rule 8 Point 3: If in your Opinion my Post in any capacity, shape, and/or form Violates Rule 5, 8, or 9 then inform me so I may Delete the Post. Check Signature for further elaboration. Assistance is appreciated. Asking about the Content Disclaimer will be treated as being Informed of a Rule 5 Violation on my part.

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Well got to see an Interesting Review of Wolfenstein: The New Order. Anyway, can't talk about that without a Rule 8 on principle beyond mentioning it and that I have the Game. Just one of those Games that I can't talk about here.

Fangs of the Asterkarn is finally Releasing this week. Finally.

Grim Dawn - Fangs of Asterkarn on Steam

Fangs of Asterkarn is our largest addition to the apocalyptic fantasy world of Grim Dawn, introducing players to the mighty Kurn tribes of Asterkarn as they contend with Ch'thonic corruption. Customize your potions, awaken the true power of Epic items, and enable the challenging new Ascendant mode.

store.steampowered.com

They basically made Grim Dawn 2.

Here's some ABO Shorts:

Spoiler: Videos

View: https://m.youtube.com/shorts/GJ6T44juh28
View: https://m.youtube.com/shorts/m9afbMjd7X0
View: https://m.youtube.com/shorts/oMNIHxQ7ja4
View: https://m.youtube.com/shorts/B9vWmm69XLw
View: https://m.youtube.com/shorts/pF9I5tbhrqc

 

[dacty]

Question about Palworld. A lot of the steam page and discussion I've seen online highlights how you can abuse/misstreat the Pals. Which, seeing as I'm the type of person who feels horribly guilty for being mildly rude to an NPC is rather off putting.

Is that something you have to engage with to make progress, or can you get to the end while taking good care of your pals?

 

[Rivan9000]

Is that something you have to engage with to make progress, or can you get to the end while taking good care of your pals?

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Oh no! It's absolutely a choice. You in no way have to mistreat the Pals. In fact, abusing them is very much a 'short term gain' sort of thing.

Me and my buddy have been playing the game and while we've done a... few questionable things we treat the Pals pretty good.

So yeah, you do not need to engage with abuse/mistreatment of the cute little murder machines.

 

[dacty]

Oh no! It's absolutely a choice. You in no way have to mistreat the Pals. In fact, abusing them is very much a 'short term gain' sort of thing.

Me and my buddy have been playing the game and while we've done a... few questionable things we treat the Pals pretty good.

So yeah, you do not need to engage with abuse/mistreatment of the cute little murder machines.

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Thanks! A Pokemon style game that isn't locked to Game Feak's done to death formula is something I've wanted for a long time.

But all I was seeing online was discussions about putting Pals in blenders and the like, which isn't my cup of tea.

 

[Hotuko]

But all I was seeing online was discussions about putting Pals in blenders and the like, which isn't my cup of tea.

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Its very much a choice to do X or Y, there's no wrong or right way to do things. You could capture and murder a bunch of Pals for extra resources, or capture them and blend them to create a god level Pal that the end game content will mercilessly mock you for. Or you could take the longer routes of training, grinding, fighting in the columiusm, harvesting ancient components and Dog Coins. People mostly talk about the evils you can do, because very few games would give you the same options that Palworld does.

The only truly murderous thing you have to do in the game, is the ending of the Calamity fight. Which is a cut scene that you get no choices with.

 

[Nervaqus987]

Question about Palworld. A lot of the steam page and discussion I've seen online highlights how you can abuse/misstreat the Pals. Which, seeing as I'm the type of person who feels horribly guilty for being mildly rude to an NPC is rather off putting.

Is that something you have to engage with to make progress, or can you get to the end while taking good care of your pals?

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While there's of course ways to force Pals into hard labor, I've basically never used them because it's just not that efficient.

Setting your base to demand more labor gets more Work Speed, but it also increases SAN loss, which in turn means Pals will have to take more frequent breaks from tasks to eat and rest, meaning you need to increase the amount of resources you spend on that(both in the form of investing in hot springs and making more food). If you don't, that will degrade your Pal's health and reduce both their Work and Movement Speed. It's also not uncommon for Pals to just stop working because of their conditions.

The added Work Speed from harsher conditions is just not worth the hassle of maintaining it, IMO.

Similarly, higher quality foods for your Pals. The baseline is just feeding them berries and/or baked berries. And while that works, they don't have a high Satiety. When a Pal's hunger lowers to a specific point, they go to get food and fill it back up, but they don't eat till max or to a specific level. They eat until their Hunger is pushed over the point they go to get more food. Berries don't have much Satiety, so Pals don't get as much head room before they go to get more food.

Better food has better Satiety, so it fills more of the Hunger bar and thus lasts longer.

Then there's medicine. Even on normal labor, Pals will just randomly roll an injury or negative condition that reduces their Work and Movement Speed. I set up a Medicine Stand and keep it topped off(mostly with the medicine I find in the world, but occasionally make some if I'm running low) and Pals will just automatically treat themselves. It's far easier than having to handle it myself.


With 1.0, even the lengths I need to go to in order to breed the ultimate lifeform have been drastically reduced. Before, I would need to engage in sprawling eugenics programs to get Pals with the traits I wanted with the failures being disposed of, being kept for future programs if they had at least some useful passives or high IVs, or used as fodder to be condensed into the final product. Now, I can just Captain America this shit. The Surgery Table lets me implant passive traits I want and overwrite ones I don't, the traits themselves can be farmed at the World Tree with relics(which granted, has some RNG but I still manage to amass a decent stockpile of useful traits), IV boosting Fruits can be bought or crafted, and even special fruits that will condense a Pal without the need to shove dozens of their siblings(down from the hundreds before 1.0) can be bought.

Last night, I created a super Pal with about fifteen minutes worth of running around getting the right resources that previously would have taken hours and hours of IRL time and hundreds of Pal lives to make.

About the only thing left that you need to breed for it to pass down certain exclusive skills.

 

[Anonnermus]

Question about Palworld. A lot of the steam page and discussion I've seen online highlights how you can abuse/misstreat the Pals. Which, seeing as I'm the type of person who feels horribly guilty for being mildly rude to an NPC is rather off putting.

Is that something you have to engage with to make progress, or can you get to the end while taking good care of your pals?

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Ehhh, you can butcher them, to get their drops again. You can juice them, to boost a different Pal of the same species. You can toss them on the surgery slab and turn them into workaholic artisan insomniac work slaves and similar.

All of which can be done in different ways - catch/kill new pals (and if your palbox gets too full to keep going and you don't want to kill them you can just set pals free), use Starfruits instead of the juicer, get lucky on your catches/eggs/breeding.

If you're thinking of this in the form of like.. being an abusive pet owner or something, you can't go around slapping and kicking your pals for shiggles or anything to my knowledge. The closest you can get to that is setting a base's work rate to Brutal and not supplying good enough food and beds to make up for it.