Every Friday, A.V. Club staffers kick off our weekly open thread for the discussion of gaming plans and recent gaming glories, but of course, the real action is down in the comments, where we invite you to answer our eternal question: What Are You Playing This Weekend?
Let’s be very clear: This is not a review of Nioh 2, the new character action game from Sony and Team Ninja. If you’d like to read one of those, they are, blessedly, not rare on the internet at the moment—although you could also just go back and read our 2017 review of Nioh 1, since the new title and its direct predecessor are stunningly similar games. (To be fair, the addition of a character creator, complete with the ability to paint your own teeth green in pursuit of Monster Factory weirdness, is a nice addition.) No, this is not a review of Nioh 2; rather, it’s a review of the inventory system of Nioh 2. Here’s the review: It fucking sucks.
This is also not new. The item system in the original Nioh—which, like this game, is a perfectly competent, sometimes even thrilling, action game, other issues aside—was absolutely terrible. Every enemy soldier or hulking demon lurking across the landscape of 17th-century Japan was a Secret Piñata, just waiting to explode into a nigh-identical cascade of boots, swords, and random drops that players were then obligated to scoop up to confusedly peruse at a later date. In its efforts to translate the Diablo/Borderlands loot box model to a game so closely modeled on the Dark Souls “slow-moving action” template, Team Ninja managed to make something that invoked the worst of both worlds—and now they’ve done it all over again.
For example: Is this copy of “Nanban Greaves” better than the other three I’ve already picked up in the last 20 minutes? Well, let’s see: Its rarity color is different, although that’s not always an indicator of quality. And its level is a little higher, although that doesn’t automatically translate into more defense. Does 1.5 percent extra money dropped compensate for losing 0.7 percent damage when attacking with my weak attack while in my High sword stance? Am I keeping track of which of its skills I can pass on to other weapons through the game’s equally obtuse crafting system? Does it match my ensemble? Am I being good, Daddy? Am I achieving optimal equipment loadout? Am I being good?
In a first draft game like the original Nioh, this was just barely acceptable—even if, as we noted at the time, it also created a problem wherein the developers lose their ability to properly tune different parts of the game’s difficulty, because god knows what stat boosters have actually dropped into any given player’s lap. But to look at this system and say, “Yes, good, more of this again” with a sequel is absolutely baffling. At the very least, you’d expect them to increase the game’s inventory limit to reduce the amount of time—often several minutes per session!—that players spend clearing utter garbage out of their giant rucksacks of shit whenever it gets filled to the brim. This is one of the only games ever created in which an “enemies drop more equipment” upgrade is less of a buff, and more of a threat. Even for players who find this kind of number-comparing minutiae thrilling, Nioh 2 is an exercise in overwhelm. And sure, you could just not pick the stuff up. But that runs counter to every instinct video games have been instilling in players for years.
It’s also a symptom of Nioh 2 as a whole, a legitimately fun game that’s so hopped up on its addiction to systems that it frequently threatens to descend into mere gaming white noise. When every enemy drops an item with a big blue arrow slapped on it—when every new drop promises to be the answer to all your problems—it becomes a numbing slog in its own right. It’s not even too much of a good thing. It’s just too much crap, a problem that, like so much of what keeps Nioh 2 from being a truly great game, isn’t very new at all.
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So I played Final Fantasy VII remake and now I’m in a dilemma:It’s coronavirus quarantine season and I have $60 to spend in a game that will keep me occupied for 2 weeks in self-isolation. Should I geta)FFVII remakeorb)Persona 5 Royale?They’re both coming out around my birthday time and I have to choose either with a $60 budget. Help.
I’d say, if you’re focusing on length of play (to last 2 weeks+), Persona 5 Royal wins by a wide margin. No matter what mini-games and side activities FFVII Remake could potentially possess, Persona 5 Royal will have exponentially more to do, for good and for bad (as it wears on a bit near the end of its run time). But, if you want to be part of the phenomenon that will be FFVII Remake hype talk and delve straight into an extension of the unbelievable action RPG spectacles to be had, there’s a reason people have been waiting decades for even this first slither of the main story. And it looks like veritably everyone will be jumping into this at launch, be it LPs, reviews, new fans and old. Comparatively, most of the conversation on Royal will just be about how it differs from the original version and if it justifies its extra cost and/or ameliorates Persona 5’s deficits. In the end though, both will be on sale within a month or two for ~$35, most likely. I’ve already played Persona 5 vanilla and have no desire to zoom right back into that world, so it’s 100% FFVII Remake for me, but length vs. event impact would be my dividing line between the two all the same. Hope this info helps and regardless of which one you choose, that you have a splendid time with either.
Depends on how much you enjoyed Midgar. I did not enjoy it terribly much, so I’m not jazzed at the prospect of spending 20+ hours in it.
You should brace for a year… that’s the time it will take to make a vaccine.
Persona 5 Royal then.
Happy (or should I say CRAPPY…because of the quarantine) birthday!I’d go with P5 myself, because it’s a full game and not a sizable slice of a game, but I suppose it all depends on how much you like P5/how long ago you played it.
After sporadically watching The Witcher over the last couple of months while folding laundry, I thought I’d revisit Wild Hunt a bit. And loot drops have become the worst aspect of modern game design. They’re kind of an unavoidable consequence the length and complexity of modern games, but it‘s really difficult to get excited by a boot that offers a single digit percentage upgrade. It’s my least favorite thing about the most recent God if War. Used to be you’d get a new item and suddenly you could float aloft on the flatulence of Hades. Now you get a 3% stamina recovery when evading wearing light armor. It’s an excel sheet and it’s dull as hell.
It’s totally safe to ignore all loot drops in the Witcher 3 and focus on a set of Witcher gear to collect and upgrade, unless you really want to wear a doublet that looks like the Maryland flag.
I’m finally getting around to playing Nier:Automata and while I love the game I’m slightly baffled by the vast array of different upgrade materials. Fortunately the game’s combat isn’t particularly challenging so I can safely ignore them. But the random pieces of loot scattered about the world kinda take away from the strange meditative story.
Murder By Numbers, a mash-up of Picross with a detective visual novel, has its hooks deep in me. Picross is an addictive puzzle format, though I wish it came with an “Undo” button that kept track of my move history, because things can get pretty hairy when you move to 15×15 grids.
Thank you, William. This is exactly what I’ve been looking for. I finished Nioh 1 a while ago and got excited about the sequel. It looks great but in all the reviews I read so far, the loot system is only mentioned in passing.
My country is currently in Phase 3 with Corona, with all events cancelled and even restaurants and cafes closing. I had a packed weekend with a brewery visit, movie festival, drinks with friends,… all cancelled.
SOOOOO me and some friends bought Wreckfest, the destruction derby car game, after one friend was lyrical about it. That’ll be my evening activity for this weekend, wrecking cars and taunting friends. I’ll also try to finish Greedfall and now that I finally have internet in my appartment will be playing some Apex, Fortnite and Warzone (too slow in the early game but it looks and feels great, also the gulag is amazing).
Read the IGN review. Their critique of the item system is even more detailed and critical than this.
Thanks for the recommendation. This bit right?:
The point is, Nioh 2 is deep as an ocean, and while that’s great in many ways, it can also often be overwhelming and lead to some loot-related issues. Playing the menu game of Nioh 2 is just as important as the one that’s played while in combat, and it can be exhausting sometimes to spend 30 minutes or more going through literally hundreds of pieces of gear, deciding what should be dismantled, what should be sold, what should be saved and offered to a shrine for extra health elixirs, what’s worth keeping around to feed into another item and level it up, and so on. Nioh 2 essentially turns loot into its own currency, which cheapens the excitement of gear-based rewards from boss battles, quest rewards, and treasure chests because the loot is almost never special. Even when exotics drop, it feels like opening a chest in Diablo and just getting a bunch of gold.All of this inventory management is important because – boy let me tell ya – Nioh 2 is hard, and you’re going to need every stat-based advantage you can get.Something else I missed? Not really that different, less entertaining maybe.
Still chuckling with Am I being good, Daddy? Am I achieving optimal equipment loadout? Am I being good? 😀
Salutations~!I was originally going to finish all of FFXV’s DLC episodes by this point, but I faltered in my reasoning and wasted precious time downloading Episode Gladio/Ignis/Prompto when I had thought the core game already had that data loaded up. See, I had assumed Square-Enix had pulled a “built-in DLC” scenario with those first 3 episodes, and was surprised to discover once I was done downloading Episode Ardyn and the 24 gig March 2019 patch that… NOPE, gotta d/l 3-4 gigs per each of those glorious outings to boot. So that ate up all my time yesterday. Doh well! I know what I’ll be doing this weekend, regardless! Stockpiling resources Enjoying the vibrant personalities of this intrepid JRPG boy band one excursion at a time! In the meantime…(Nyx[Aaron Paul]: YEAH~!, Regis Lucis! Yeah, GODS-BONDS, BA-BY~!)Final Fantasy XV: Kingsglaive [Solid B]This tie-film shares many attributes with other complementary works of the last 10-20+ years. Namely, El Camino, FFVII: Crisis Core, and Rogue One to respectively, Breaking Bad, FFVII (1997), and A New Hope. From one perspective, they could just be mere extensions to the lore and nothing more. But, delving deeper into what they’re all trying to say, they all serve (to me at least), as microcosms of the message, characters, themes, and pathos of their parent works. Now, is that AS good as being able to stand WHOLLY on your own as a creative endeavor? That’s definitely debatable. But you know what? I treasure these works BECAUSE of their creation-by-association and how much they lean into those bonds and links nonetheless. So my take would be: as long as those reverences and reveries pay and made to the past are EARNED and ADD to the conversations possible on the series to which they tie, no harm, no foul. No matter how minute, the world these games, movies, and TV shows inhabit are stronger for them existing than if they did not. That’s the important thing. Alllllllllllllll that having been said, how is FFXV: Kingsglaive, specifically? It’s rote and cliche ridden and very very fantasy action trope-y. BUT… never lazily or maliciously so. It simply feels like the creators involved leaned on a bunch of standard fantasy tropes to encapsulate and minimize setup time. Maximizes the artwork and stilted message on display in exchange for having limited prerequisites to character and core world building. This film doesn’t have much to say beyond its spectacle, but it has a nice hustle to its execution. Similar to how ‘80s and ‘90s action movies tended to have a 10-20 minute chunk of an on-ramp to get you to know a character in the most minimalist way possible and THEN it was off to the spectacle. But again, the key here is- NOT offensively or derisively so to the audience. This ain’t deep but it’s not insulting either. E.G. of the ‘90s—#1 Executive Decision: Airline terrorist assault conflict setup as swiftly as possible, Kurt Russell is established as a smart CIA intelligence operative who’s 100% green in terms of on-the-field experience (with a mandatory flight lesson to foreshadow him having to eventually land the airliner for the climax), and he finds himself in over his head when he and an Ops Team with which he’s unfamiliar are stuck on that airline now in the cargo section and presumed dead by the capitol. Can they establish contact, assess and/or extinguish the threat before them, and come out alive in the process? Short, simple, sweet.Closer E.G. to Kingsglaive- #2 47 Ronin: Keanu Reeves is a half breed that’s barely tolerated by the fellow samurai with which he’s been adopted and employed under one Lord Asano. Treachery slays Asano and now ALL of his samurai turned Ronins’ lives are forfeit, yet they choose to utilize this opportunity to pretend to be destitute and mad men while seeking vengeance down the line. And Keanu’s treatment serves as a swift parallel and precursor for the audience as to the excommunication and isolation the rest of the team will face for the remainder of the movie until it’s time to fulfill the end of this supernatural historical retelling. Again, nothing MIND-BLOWING or unbelievably nuanced about either of the above flicks. But their setups/ramp-ups don’t waste any time either. They have focus, drive, and a faithfulness to the material they’re imbuing with entertainment, emotion, and action spectacle. So too with Kingsglaive. THAT having been said, would I recommend Kingsglaive to NON FFXV fans? Absolutely not. It’s really nice to have several of the “blanks” in the lore from the main game filled in by the interactions and discussions of this movie, but devoid of that connection to the parent title, a whole lot of the parallel structure to the sacrifices and anguish on display just come off as what they are— a tad contrived and very rote. BUT, IN parallel to the story of Noctis and FFXV, you see with Nyx this similar, melodic struggle to do what’s right when all the gods seem to ever ask you to do is give up more and more of yourself. Quick Rundown of the Plot: Nyx is one of many refugees who were given shelter within Insomnia, an enormous, prosperous city protected by Regis Lucis’s bond to a sacred crystal that wards and walls off evil. This was done in exchange for their service as the eponymous Kingsglaive. They are not treated as equals nor do they feel as equals. And when the evil Empire broaches the walls of Insomnia in preparation and guise to sign a treaty that will save Insomnia but also relinquish their former homesteads to Imperial Rule, the Kingsglaive are very NOT HAPPY about that. Nyx himself is torn between wanting to stop the reign of the Empire at ALL costs and wanting to save his and his own first. Never uniquely so; if you’ve seen any fantasy action flick, this is all old hat. BUT, again, never devoid of emotion or soul either. Rote BUT effective. AND, similar to the appeal of Rogue One, just because we know the end result of all this brouhaha is that Insomnia is doomed doesn’t negate the tension and mysteriousness behind exactly how it all transpires. That too follows a plethora of tropes but is bolstered all the same by the stellar voice acting on display (Aaron Paul, Lena Headey, Sean Bean [you KNOW who he’s voicing, don’t tell me you don’t], and Darin De Paul). So, in the end, much as with FFXV prime, I was surprisingly engaged by everything I witnessed. It’s not remotely perfect, but surprisingly deeper than expected. I’d rather watch it than The Spirits Within by leaps and bounds, at least. Since this movie has real characters as opposed to glorified tech demo models.Episode Ardyn: [A-]I’m just going to lead with this link. If you love anything Lotus Juice related, click away. It does not disappoint and it’s one of the many highlights of this solid DLC outing. So what’s the real deal behind Ardyn and his vengeance set against the Kingdom of Lucis? I had originally speculated that Ardyn had gone the way of the protagonist/Vault Dweller from Fallout I:Namely, that he had sacrificed everything to embody the ills of what he fought out in the darkness, and found that once he tried to return to his homeland, they would no longer accept him. That is PARTIALLY true, as it turns out, but there’s also a Cain and Abel undercurrent that drives that banishment and imprisonment for Ardyn’s fate. Not to mention the aforementioned fickle interests of the gods, making everyone in FFXV’s land of Eos veritable puppets in their endless mind games with one another (*shakes fist at Ifrit and Bahamut*). In short, Ardyn wasn’t a monster. Not even after he took on the hefty weight of being a healer to all and absorbing the darkness of the night to give others a new dawn. He still retained his humanity, through and through. Nope, it was only in absorbing the powers of the gods to survive that he started to become raving mad and thirst only for vengeance and retribution. A kind of subversive Promethean end, it would seem (fitting that I just saw The Lighthouse for the first time this week too). He was naturally selfless and had to learn how to be demonic from the events he experienced. And the best part about this DLC is that, while we ARE told about this, we can also experience Ardyn’s palpable rage and anger directly. So yes, the proceedings here are all stilted and melodramatic and over-the-top, but as stated before with Kingsglaive, this is all done with a sturdy knowledge of the old school tropes on display and a heartfelt respect for the character tales being shared here. In short, conventionality when earned and respected can still win over your heart and soul most effectively; even if originality isn’t the priority this time out. It was all very reminiscent of what I enjoyed so much about Odin Sphere: Leifthrasir. I had a fun time with the combat (though it does now pale in comparison to that of the FFVII Remake demo), the spectacle, and the expansion of everything I already treasured from FFXV prime. (That’s right! Stealth FFRK mention at the last second! Muhahahahaha! :P)As such, my only sadness, really from both this AND Kingsglaive, is that Lunafreya still gets heavily underutilized by and large. Thanks to Square-Enix, we’ll never get her DLC nor the full fledged conclusion to Bahamut’s connection to all of this pointless madness, and she spends the majority of her time in Kingsglaive being a self aware pawn and escapee. Oh well, at least FFRK finally made her playable. I hope I get your stellar gear someday so that Lunafreya can devastate some 6* magicites in Noctis’s honor. We’ll see. Take care and have a safe weekend everyone. Be careful out there.
I want to play FFXV but dearly, dearly want to not engage with the tie-in media. I hope Kingsglaive isn’t too critical. At least that art is beautiful!
No worries—I definitely don’t think Kingsglaive is critical to understanding anything else that happens in the main story of FFXV. Its most “important” plot developments just serve as lore precursor to the multiplayer component of the Royal Pack DLC. That’s it. Everything else is just a nifty reflection of the same core themes and characters of FFXV prime. My overall response to it was akin to Pete Campbell ala Mad Men: “Huh… a thing like that!”
The bloat of the first game was one of its issues, along with repetition and some dreadful boss placement. Mechanically its a great game but those issues just drag it down every time they pop up. I bought the first one but since its popped up on PS+ i think i’ll just wait for the sequel to do the same.
While I found the first Nioh game fun enough, I’m likely to skip Nioh 2, at least while it’s full price. Inventory management is probably my least favorite thing to do in video games, and I’ve been playing a lot games lately that suffer from the same kind of inventory management fatigue, including one of the games I’ll be playing this weekend, Divinity: Original Sin. First, I want to say that, as of yesterday, my “weekend” became indefinitely long. The school I teach at closed for an indeterminate amount time, so gaming is about to take up a lot of my time. And Divinity: Original Sin is a great game to take up that time, since it’s incredibly long. Maybe too long. First, the aforementioned inventory management is wearing out its welcome. Every battle comes with 2 or 3 new items that I need to identify and compare with my current stuff. To compound the issue, the battles are starting to come up too often. I’ve been positive about the amount of fighting the game has thrown at me so far, but it’s starting to be too much. Since it’s turn-based, battles take much longer than a game with a real-time with pause battle system. Until recently, the game seemed keenly aware of that fact, making me fight in strategic areas and giving me plenty of other quests that didn’t necessarily make me fight. Now, though, I’m slowly working my way through a long corridor of goblin fights that wouldn’t be out of place in a RTWP game. The fights aren’t difficult, but it’s all I’m doing, and since I also have to pause to check the item drops after each fight, it’s becoming a bit of a slog. It’s especially bad when there’s a large amount of enemies. Waiting for nine goblins to take their move is not fun. Even if the battle itself isn’t difficult, the wait time sucks. I sneaked through a large group of sleeping goblins, but I’m worried I’ll have to go back for the experience. Still, the game has been excellent for 50 or 60 hours, so even if I eventually put it down, again, without beating it, I still have a positive view of the game as a whole.Since I’m about to have a lot more free time, I’ll probably also renew my Final Fantasy XIV subscription. I haven’t played any of patch 5.2 yet, and I generally like the raids. I might even have some time to learn the savage raids.And finally, I’m sure I’ll spend a lot time playing Chess. I think I need to do some reading to improve my game further. There’s only so far you can go by playing games and learning from your mistakes, and I think I’m at that point. My middle game is fine, but I need to start reading up on different openings and endgame theory. If I lose, it’s usually because I drop a pawn early or make a miscalculation late, and I need to figure out how to change that.
Hey everyone, I’m making my way slowly and frustratedly through Dark Souls 2, which is probably justified in being known as the worst of the series, although it’s still mostly good fun. I love the sense of adventure and danger and exploration, but there are definitely issues with dodgy hitboxes and annoying mobs of enemies and lacklustre boss fights. Beyond that, it’s just missing something special that the original game had; maybe it’s the feeling of being a consistent and connected world, or the ominous, claustrophobic atmosphere that’s lacking a little bit. Also, some of the fights are getting incredibly irritating, and yeah I know ‘git gud’ but SHIT ALIVE these are hard. It’s a bit of a roller-coaster of emotions for me, from excitement and enthusiasm to irritation and anger. I’m currently fighting a giant spider, and I think I still have like 75% of the game left to play, so we’ll see how much further I get.After that, I have ‘The Stanley Parable’ on my weekend list, which I’ve never played but sure sounds interesting, and I might get a few rounds of Apex Legends in there too. Stay safe, be kind, have a great weekend!
A couple of tips that should improve your experience considerably: Dodging in DS2 is affected by stats. Increasing your Agility (via levelling ADP or ATN) gives you more iFrames on dodges and rolls, as well as speeding up item animations. That should solve your hitbox issues.Most of the mobs/ambushes can be taken apart bit by bit, ranged weapons like bows are handy for aggroing enemies and making them come to you. You basically have to play more strategically.Some enemies are afraid of torches, particularly if you’re playing the remaster. The spiders in Tseldora, for instance, which may help a lot in the Freja boss fight.Check you’re not in the “Company of Champions” covenant, which is literally hard mode. If you joined it by mistake, you can leave by talking to the cat.Don’t give up, skeleton! [+]/
Thanks for the advice! I’ve been trying to keep my ADP nice and high, and I’m definitely noticing a difference. Getting better at dealing with those enemy mobs too.Finally made it past Freja and smashed a few boss fights pretty quickly after that! I’ve noticed that my enjoyment of this game is heavily tied in to my general mood on the day I play it: it’s not the kind of game I can play when I’m tired or stressed, just leads into a downward spiral of frustration, ha. Making my way into The Gutter right now. Hooray for dark poisonous pits! Cheers again, I will persevere!
npAs much as I love that game, there are a couple gotchas that can catch you out (like ADP, and the fact you push a button to open hidden doors instead of hitting them this time).The Gutter’s another place where torches are handy, make sure you light all the sconces…
Yeah I read something online about that secret-door button press about halfway through my current game, which confused me more as the Pharros Lock light-faces require you to actually attack them like in the first Dark Souls, so I didn’t know what I was doing for a while!Definitely enjoying myself a lot more with it now, first three Primal Bonfires are lit and I’m enjoying the exploration without being frustrated too much, for the moment!
I have much the same opinion as you on DS2. After watching the Dans (Floyd and Jones) co-op it, I’m starting to be convinced that it was designed for power-players and co-op playing, especially as it moves into endgame/DLC content. There are a few AI-controlled co-op partners, for people without an online connection (or for when the server/netcode goes down).If its possible (or affordable), just move on to DS3 (prettier, more interesting in my opinion) or if you have a PS4, Bloodborne (which I happens to be the “Souls-like” I came closest to finishing).
Yeah Bloodborne is great, I played it last year and *kind of* finished it, accidentally getting the early ending which cut me off from the real end-game content and DLC stuff. Will probably go back to it eventually! I definitely prefer the dark-fantasy aesthetic of Dark Souls in general, and I’ve heard DS3 is a great game so look forward to getting into that one at some point! I always need a decent break between From Software games, need something a bit more friendly like Mario to chill me out a little first!
Still bored out of my mind waiting for Animal Crossing… Nintendo should release it a week early to help keep everyone inside… Anyway, I’m still chugging along in Borderlands 3. It’s a fine game, but it just feels like a giant reference machine for the previous games. Literally every big character from each game is crammed into this. I’ll definitely finish it and play some of the postgame stuff with friends, but I still think 2 is the height of the series. I’m also looking forward to the next Phantasy Star Online 2 beta on Xbox that starts next week. I missed the first test but I’m excited to jump back into this franchise after so long.
Do not worry about equips unless they’re obviously better (like armor value within weight ratio you want). Tiny stat differences don’t matter much. Just lock the ones you know are obviously better, and maybe maxed out older items you want for soul transfer and mass donate everything else at the shrine. I don’t even bother looking at stuff unless it’s very clearly a step up in the main number, and even then, I only go into the inventory screen after picking up a ton of stuff and then look at just what’s obviously cream of the crop. It takes a huge load off.I get where you’re coming from, but it’s a game that actually makes inventory management very quick, if you aren’t stressing over comparing the 1.5% gold increase on your gear that you’re never going to notice whether it’s there or not.
“lmao git gud” is the only thing this whinging deserves.
“And sure, you could just not pick the stuff up. But that runs counter to every instinct video games have been instilling in players for years.”
This is a hilarious complaint. Like nah man, if you don’t want something, don’t pick it up. Most loot games teach you to ignore certain colors of eq after a certain level and if this game is just as generous with purples and oranges as the first one was then you should know it after 2 hours. It’s practically the same complaint as with folks bitching how tedious From Software’s games are because you have to kill everything again once you die… even though no, not really, you can run away from everything that isn’t a boss with maybe the exception of Dark Souls 2’s bonus bosses from its DLCs, since you need to run through some shitty corridors to get to them.
HURHURGITGUDHURHUR!!!!!
I think his larger complaint how this “loot-and-shoot slash” doesn’t fit well with the more deliberately-paced gameplay, as well as other mismatches between gameplay and game mechanics. Yeah, the title is probably a little click-baity (in a kind of snarky way, IMO), but the thesis is well-developed.Opinions aren’t a zero-sum game, nor does he need to have a certain gaming background to write about it, unless the cover has “For Hardcore Gamers Only!” printed on it.It’s not hard to see why people find the hardcore Souls community so exclusive. From Soft/Team Ninja doesn’t need you to act as their knight-errant.
As someone who played a LOT of Nioh, the best advice I can give to new and returning players is this: ignore all equipment for like, the first 20 hours. The growth curve of the game is exponential, with a looooong lead-in, to the point where it is entirely possible to complete a first-playthrough with the equipment you get in the very first level.Obviously I haven’t played Nioh 2 yet, so perhaps this is all subject to change, but if it’s as similar to Nioh 1 as most reviews say it is, don’t sweat the inventory system, you don’t need to bother with that shit until way, way later, well into your second playthrough. Until then, just wear whatever works, pickup stuff that looks like an obvious upgrade, and don’t think too much about it. You’ll have time to min-max your gear when you’re on your 3rd or 4th playthrough.
Secret PiñataAn apt metaphor (also a good idea for a party game?). The obscure weapon/armor mechanics (ie “Is this better or worse than my current equip?” is a research topic, not a simple Y/N question) don’t bother me; the Souls series does this, too. But I shouldn’t have 10 identical-at-a-glance Spy’s Kusarigamas to sift through to find the one that’s better than mine. Do Team Ninja or their localization team not understand the use of adjectives (“Master”, “Demonbane”, “Light”, etc.) or qualifiers (“Level [X]”, “[X] Tier”, etc.)? It’s not what drove me to quit playing the first one, but it was a contributing factor. In Personal Video Game Archivist News, I think I got my Retropie-running Raspberry Pi 3 up and running correctly…mostly. The thing that was holding me back was the fact that I thought it was running the roms from the USB drive by default, so I would load it up, insert it into the Pi, and start it up. But I kept having problems updating the various bits of software and drivers keeping everything running smoothly. Well, it turns out that the Retropie’s automatic process would copy all the roms on the USB drive to the SD card with all the important Retropie software and drivers on it. Add in my penchant for Sega CD emulation and you can see how the poor 32GB SD card found itself quickly overwhelmed. I’ve since fixed it so the roms are stored and run off the USB Drive and updated all the stuff that needed updating (probably), so it’s running pretty smooth now.What I’m currently messing with on the Retropie: Shining Force CD and Panic! (both Sega CD). The former is a collection of Shining Force Gaiden (“side stories” would be the rough translation, I believe). The latter is best described as randomly clicking through a collection of Terry Gilliam-style Monty Python interstitials (only 20% more Japanese-y):I’m not sure if the Youtube link worked. My firewall at work has gotten really strict.
I like loot and randomness; but too many games lean on quantity over quality. It’s hard to get excited about drops when “magic” is only a tier up from “common”, and “unique” means “everyone has one”. Something like Dark Souls’ drops, but with a chance for random buffs/debuffs, would be rad as fuck.Speaking of, I’ll probably be playing Dark Souls 3 this weekend. After a coupla weeks of bashing my head on Sister Friede and the Nameless King, I took on Lorian again and found myself doing better than before. With any luck I’ll take him down today, and open up some new zones to explore.
My favorite game lately has been “read what I said I might play last week and see how very wrong I was.”Last week I was all about Halo, Bloodstained and Pokemon. In the end, it ended up being Ori and the Blind Forest and New Super Mario Bros Wii U Deluxe Super Mega Edition. I’ll get Mario out of the way first. I’m a couple of worlds in and have been picking away at it from time to time. The floatiness of the jumps in these games have always been the bane of my existence. Also my urge to find every coin the first time through. But I’m warming up on it after finding a couple of secret paths and a way to get an obscene amount of lives from a ghost ship (not that I need them). The platforming is taking some getting used to. I’m finding a lot in common with my run between Ori and the Blind Forest and Hollow Knight. Lots of early frustration that eases after getting a few abilities, but doesn’t quite go away. I loved the hell out of Hollow Knight though, so this is a compliment. The biggest complaint I have about Ori is it does an incredibly shit job communicating damage. The life bar at the bottom is a bit opaque and the way amounts of damage are communicated is miserable. There’s a lot of room at the beginning to die quickly without fully knowing what happened, especially with the environments that, while beautifully detailed, obscure danger pretty well. There are thorns in the background, thorns in different places, but these specific ones will hurt you. Enemy runs off? Here’s a foreground image to block your view. Now add in a save system that’s dependent on you figuring out the best time to use a limited resource (yes you get more later), and it’s really easy to lose progress. And yet I’m still sticking with it because I’m getting into the improved movement bits where I’m launching myself around and it’s getting there. Definitely ends up being a game that tells me when it’s time to stop.
Would you call Ori analogous to Hollow Knight? I loved Hollow Knight, even if I didn’t actually finish it (I stopped at Watcher Knights the last time I tried playing it).
First off, I highly recommend Hollow Knight and yes that fight was a massive pain in the ass. Lots of juggling. I recommend doing it with a pair of headphones so you can hear when the attacks are coming (each one has a different sound so you’ll know what the other one is doing). Also, this thing, which I didn’t do but sounds greatI’ve gotten a decent way into Ori and I wouldn’t call it analogous. It does its own thing and does it pretty well. Ori has a certain level of obtuseness at times that’s frustrating and some bits of it turn into the platforming hell late game Hollow Knight becomes, just earlier. I find the combat to be more satisfying in Hollow Knight, but Ori holds up pretty well with its movement. Ironically, from what I’m hearing, the sequel to Ori borrows heavily from Hollow Knight, so maybe it’s addressed a bunch of my complaints.
Sonic Forces is one of PS+’s free games this month, and despite the reviews, I’m enjoying it? Like it’s not as good as Sonic Colors, it’s kinda basic, but it’s also nowhere near the jank of past 3D Sonics either. Thoroughly acceptable platformer with a nice self-aware cheesiness, and it allows you to create your own Sonic OC Do Not Steal. It feels like Sega’s kind of coming to terms with its past attempts at making Sonic extreme and sort of embracing the silliness of it all, while accepting there are people who enjoyed that.Continuing to enjoy Super Mario Odyssey and Mario Maker 2 on the Switch. And after some setbacks on the Gamemaker front I feel I’m moving forward again. I rejiggered collision so I could put down walls as a tileset which makes building levels way easier, that took a while, but I also found a nice tutorial on basic enemy AI so now I can have things chase after the player. A few more basics I need to get out of the way before I can build a level in earnest and really start testing the feel of everything.
I have some Terraria and Stellaris games on the go with friends that we revisit at least once per week, but a lot of my leisure time has been taken up by this “write 30 things in 30 days” challenge I’ve joined. For the month of March, the doomworld forums’ Book Club For Megawads has chosen plain old vanilla Doom 2 as the subject, and that was appealing enough to finally convince me to register and compose some posts.I worried I might get burnt out and get behind, but so far I’m on pace to get it done. I’m still enthusiastic about the idea that on the 24th I’m going to get to argue over whether The Chasm is abhorrent or sublime. That’ll be fun.
For example: Is this copy of “Nanban Greaves” better than the other three I’ve already picked up in the last 20 minutes? Well, let’s see: Its rarity color is different, although that’s not always an indicator of quality. And its level is a little higher, although that doesn’t automatically translate into more defense. Does 1.5 percent extra money dropped compensate for losing 0.7 percent damage when attacking with my weak attack while in my High sword stance? Am I keeping track of which of its skills I can pass on to other weapons through the game’s equally obtuse crafting system? Does it match my ensemble? Am I being good, Daddy? Am I achieving optimal equipment loadout? Am I being good?I’m not major OCD about my builds in Souls-like games; usability, damage, and defense are my major concerns while looking over new equipment (this criteria does tend to draw all my early builds into the late-stage “just make a knight” nexus, unfortunately). However, I’m starting to appreciate the purity of “gitting gud” enough that you can embrace the whole “fashion souls” movement: wear/use any damn thing that looks good, as long as it isn’t actively counter to your build or play-style.
Well, let’s see: Its rarity color is different, although that’s not always an indicator of quality. And its level is a little higher, although that doesn’t automatically translate into more defense. Does 1.5 percent extra money dropped compensate for losing 0.7 percent damageSounds like the miserable chore that is dealing with fucking mods in Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes.
Someone’s been watching Girlfriend Reviews
Playing Final Fantasy X and going deep enough into the superbosses and dark aeons and such that I need to do some extra farming with 4x combat/overworld speed turned on, I’m running into a similar issue. Too much loot, too many things that seeeeeeeem like they’re going to be useful, too few things that actually are useful enough to justify the ridiculous amount of equipment you constantly get.Video Games
I don’t think I realized previously that over half of the fights in the game drop equipment. I absolutely don’t care with standard items, since those will just stack on top of one another, quietly reach 99, and then silently stop incrementing without requiring any intervention on my part. And if you’re just playing the game from start to finish without all the post-game challenges, you might never see the screen at the end of battle where you don’t have the inventory space to pick up your new ring with only one ability slot, already filled with the “smells kind of like Sriracha” ability, which has a 25% chance of making enemies spicy if they attack you. Is that ability even gonna be useful? Better keep it around. We’ll trash the Polka Sword instead.But even if you just dip your toes in the water and say, “Yes, now that Tidus has all of his intended abilities, I do want to see how he plays when he gets all of Auron’s strength nodes,” and you start grinding out sphere levels in late-game areas, all of a sudden fights are going much faster and you’re getting multiple pieces of equipment in some battles, and the moment you breach the inventory limit, you’re met with a prompt at the end of battle to throw stuff away until you’re back at/below the limit. You’re limited to throwing away about half a dozen items on that end-of-battle screen, so you can stave off getting a repeat of that screen for a few battles, but then it’s back. And then it’s back. And then it’s back.And when you do go out to the store to purge everything and start scrolling through all your weapons and armor, you start seeing very expensive pieces of equipment with one exciting ability that you can get swept up in the idea that there will be a use for it later (there’s not). As much as making enemies spicy sounds like it’s going to make them more delicious and give you an umami boost for your next fight, by the time you start getting into the encounters where that umami boost is really going to help, all the enemies have spicy resistance, and you probably have the rare items you need to make a perma-umami armor anyway. Monster arena? Every enemy is immune to becoming spicy, salty, sweet, bitter, and sour. So all these weapons and armor that can potentially give enemies status effects? Absolutely useless. And all these weapons and armors with musical alignments? Also useless. And all the weapons and armors that add 3%, 5%, 10%, or 20% to your stats? Well, that’s what the sphere grid’s for. Useless.As it turns out, the only weapons and armor drops you’re really going to use are the ones that were helpful the moment you got them (say, the dubstep sword which does 1.5x damage against enemies with neoclassical alignment, for that period of the game where everyone’s really into Erik Satie), until you get to the endgame. At that point, you don’t need pre-fab equipment. You need 4-slot blank slates to customize the really good abilities into, and you can buy those from Wantz for 100k apiece. Equipment drops can be a little helpful, but they’re almost entirely unnecessary by the end of the game when you’re generating 10 drops a minute.And if you need more spheres to unlock nodes? You’re going be running through old areas where the battles are going to take 5 seconds piece, generating endless amounts of chillwave weapons with spicetouch, and you’re just like, “I don’t care! None of these abilities matter anymore! I just need raw damage, haste, and status resistance!” But you’re going to have 80 weapons with chillwave alignment and 80 armors with salt ward, and music genres and flavor have no impact on fights anymore! They’re utterly ridiculous! Who cares what music these wolves listen to? But you still gotta keep going through your inventory to throw all that shit away!(yes, we’re talking about status effects and elemental alignments – I made substitutions to emphasize how silly they seem in the endgame; I hope it doesn’t make this whole thing sound like a psychotic break)Despite all this, I’ve been having fun.I made it through the main game, eventually giving up on defeating Seymour Flux and Lady Yunalesca without Trio of 9999. I just got tired of boss gimmicks that revolved around one of my characters necessarily dying. When a boss’s minion casts inflicts zombie on one character and the boss immediately casts full life, with no room to manage the zombie status in between, and no nearby shop to pick up enough holy waters to put zombie resistance on things, what you have is a situation where half my time is spent throwing phoenix downs at everyone. That not a fun fight. That’s an arduous fight.This could turn into an interesting puzzle where I need to figure out how to make all of my characters’ abilities work together more efficiently so we kill him before he casts Lol Full-Party Instant Death, but with an obnoxiously long, unskippable cut scene immediately before battle, yes, I have to admit, even knowing what’s coming, even with 18 years to develop better insight on the tricky parts of FFX, Seymour Flux is still a bullshit fight. And when I got to Lady Yunalesca and had another cut scene I didn’t want to see a second time, I used Trio of 9999 again without even one failed attempt at the fight. I’ve done these fights without that ability before. The glory of success is not worth the number of times you risk having to watch those cut scenes, and if you didn’t stock up on holy waters at the one shop that sold them before Mt. Gagazet, you are going to walk all the way back, or fail them both repeatedly until the game rolls friendlier random numbers, or you are going to charge every aeon’s limit gauge and cheese the fights in a more time-consuming way.Screw it. Screw all of it. If Trio of 9999 is the coward’s way out, I am proud to be a coward.But that brought me to the endgame, where everything opens up and becomes much more fun. I have happily filled up my monster arena and unlocked every extra boss but Nemesis, and I’m fighting my way through and occasionally farming sphere levels with Don Tonberry, currently restoring my stock in speed and power spheres through minor battles after launching Tidus (er… Whine-us) through his own, Auron’s, Waka’s, Lulu’s, and Yuna’s main grids. I still haven’t entirely wrapped my head around the master sphere grid structure. I think there are kinda optional satellite circles near characters’ main paths with endgame abilities that you may not have had enough key spheres to hit up when you were close to them? Feels like there’s going to be a lot of backtracking, but it’s all going to go faster the further I go.The payoff for investing all this grinding has been pretty great. When I first encountered a few of the dark aeons, they would either get one attack in and deal 9999 damage on everyone at once, or they would get three attacks in and do 9999 damage individually. The result was the same: I never got a turn; I never had a chance. Having upped my speed and MP and strength and unlocked Quick Hit and Auto-Life, suddenly I’m dealing 99,999 damage and getting multiple turns between enemy turns and am buffered against whatever upcoming 99,999 damage power move they have lined up. The dark aeon fights are absolutely broken bullshit, but it shows off that you can make your characters absolutely broken bullshit back. It reminds me a bit of Disgaea in that sense.I appreciate the nearly overwhelming amount of stuff there is to do now. I’ve got maybe 4 dark aeon fights left, a little bit of Blitzball, and the side quests/minigames for Kimahri, Rikku, and Lulu’s sigils. I don’t know that I’m actually going to get them all. The achievements don’t require I fully power up all the celestial weapons, so I might just forget about butterflies in Macalania Woods and cactuar hide-and-seek. Unfortunately, 200 lightning bolts is on the list as its own thing. I already went through the first-good-attempt experience of saying, “This is easy! Why do I remember this being terrible? Why does everyone say this is terrible? I’m getting this first try. No struggle whatsoever! People are so dumb!” before being struck by a very fast second lightning bolt after dodging my 91st. People aren’t dumb. I’m dumb. And I’m dumb enough to keep going for it – with attempts spaced out between other, much more fun quests.Most exciting moment of the game so far: I finished the terrible chocobo minigame on my 4th try. I’m sorry to everyone who’s ever had to wait much longer for decent RNG, including 2002 ImpliedKappa.Board GamesWe skipped having people over for board games last weekend and I just drove out 120 miles to a little beach paradise to do nothing and recharge my batteries for a bit. I brought the instruction booklets to Power Grid, Civilization: The Board Game, and Stephenson’s Rocket, the three games we have not yet even set up and attempted just yet, all of them gifts. Even without bringing the games with me to physically move pieces on the board to follow along, I think I actually successfully learned how to play three new board games in one weekend, while sitting on the beach, without missing my opportunities to take beautiful sunset pictures. I never imagined as a kid that this would be what adulthood was like.Now we just have to play all three games before I forget everything.And last night we finally got to play another session of Pandemic Legacy: Season 2 after people were unavailable for a couple weeks in a row.Warning: vague, non-specific spoilers that could potentially help people future Season 2 players make better assumptions about what they should focus on.It felt weird having that big of a break. We forgot about new actions the game added to our toolkit over the last couple sessions. We were surprised by how brutal some of the new adversities they’d thrown at us were. But our June game was probably the most satisfying game I’ve had of either campaign. Why? Because both Andrew and Amanda made huuuuuge contributions to the game and I didn’t feel like I was sucking all the oxygen out of the room and deciding everybody’s moves for them. Andrew found a way to end our June game one full 3-turn cycle ahead of my plans, and when we unlocked a new beneficial feature, Amanda remembered that there was something we learned about months ago that greatly helped us figure out what to focus on for multiple games to come. I felt more like part of a team, less like someone dragging friends into a lengthy campaign to move his pawns for him while he played solitaire.Which isn’t to say I wasn’t still a power player. I’ve been instrumental in calling out risky behavior and making sure people are not condemning themselves to getting scarred by placing themselves on spaces that might expose them to the disease. I’ve remembered which cities are in the rotation each game, how many city cards there are, how soon the next epidemic might come up in the worst case scenario, how many turns we’re guaranteed not to have another Lagos card come up. We’ve played nine games of Season 2, and you know how many scars we’ve gotten? Fuckin’ one, on my character, on our second January game, and I learned my lesson and made sure everyone else benefits from my mistake. There’s this whole horrifying mechanic that guarantees you do not know how close your characters are to death, and every time you inch forward a step, you put stickers on your character that make them less powerful. We’re through July and haven’t seen the uglier consequences of playing risky, and we’ve even managed to completely offset the one scar Jenn had to take.It’s now been four months/five games since we unlocked the terrible new mechanics that have complicated the game, and the game has still not forced players who are behind on their progress to reveal these mechanics if they had not already unlocked them. Our map could be so much prettier right now. But it’s also given us more time to build strongholds and accomplish some smaller goals that we would not have been able to, had we followed the path that the game assumes most players will follow.I appreciate how different people’s experiences can be if their luck/priorities are different from ours. It feels like we could have had a much easier time for the past four in-game months if things had worked out differently, but I feel like we’re much more prepared for the back half of the campaign. We’ve made peace with the new mechanics. We’ve made what I assume are educated guesses on how we need to address new revelations when they inevitably arrive (maybe even next month!). We’re clearly reaching a point where the game has to introduce something new or risk becoming stagnant, and what we don’t know is whether they’re going to give other players a grace month to deal with the new mechanics that we’ve been wading through for-fucking-ever, or if they’re going to let our struggles pay off so we can start sprinting through whatever new set of goals is just on the horizon, since we have truly set ourselves up for success, in spite of everything.Only time will tell. Hopefully it’s not too much time until our next game. With 7 people confirmed for board games this weekend, though, it’s going to have to wait at least another week.I’m still waiting on my collector’s editions of all things Everdell to arrive. The official release date was 2/20. It sounds like COVID-19 originally wasn’t supposed to keep them from delivering in March, but nobody knows how much is changing as we speak, so… whatever. Whatever safety precautions help limit the spread of an actual, non-translucent-cube pandemic disease, I’m for ‘em.In any case, Amanda’s birthday was last Saturday, so I gave her my non-collector’s Everdell base game. When I paid for my stuff in January, I opted to upgrade to the collector’s edition for exactly this reason. I didn’t expect her to be as excited about getting it, but it was clearly the right move. My board game instincts continue to prove exceptionally keen, both in game and out, and I continue to be obnoxiously smug about it.
I had been extremely into the setting of Blasphemous to the extent that I thought long and hard about breaking my moratorium on gaming Kickstarters when it was in development. Finally downloaded it last weekend and I’m pretty damn happy with it. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a GREAT game. There are lots of issues, especially in the area where I am now (a sort of haunted library) with enemies that can hit you off screen with extremely quick attacks, iffy platforming/collision, and a paucity of healing items. But the setting is INCREDIBLY dark, even challenging your basic Soulsborne in its darkness, where basically everyone self-flagellates (the Genuflectors just creep me right the fuck out) and I just have to find out more about what’s going on. The boss fights are challenging, and occasionally borderline-broken (the Esdras fight was a fucking abomination of hit detection), but never feel impossible; I can usually beat them in 4 or 5 tries. The music fits the mood perfectly too; very haunting and Requiem-esque, if Requiem were only played on one instrument at a time (usually a piano). If you’re usually drawn more to setting/place than perfectly tuned mechanics, this could be the game for you.Aside from that, some friends and I have been having a regular game night where we get together and play through Divinity: Original Sin 2 as separate characters and since everything’s quarantined, we’ll hopefully get some quality time in. Maybe some Wolfenstein: Youngblood, if we’re lucky
This week I’ve mainly been getting ready to move. With any luck, my area will not go into total lockdown before the move is completed, but there’s nothing I can do about that, so it’s work work work until I can’t.In my down moments, I’ve been continuing with StarCraft 2, because I hate myself. I’ve continued with the Zerg campaign, but actually veered off a bit into learning how to play the versus game. My regular online opponent and I tried out a round of the co-op, and I realized just how different the campaign setup was, and that I would need to learn the proper versus game to be effective in co-op. So I’ve been playing through AI matches, stomping one bot after the other into the dirt. I’m up to medium at the moment, but can’t say that it is posing any sort of actual challenge. I expect that at the next level the AI will start to actually play the game, and I will be summarily pummeled. I am, after all, an Old.
I got myself an XB1X for my birthday this week so I am gonna start catching up on a bunch of games while I wait for New Horizons and Persona 5 Royal. I had heard Game Pass hyped up a lot but maaaan what a steal. I already have too many games on this thing and I’ve just had it a few days.
Yeah, my least favorite part of the game. “Oh great, a rare drop…of the boots I have 20 different copies of already”. Half the game is spent in the inventory screens. Were it not such a fun game, this would be a deal breaker.