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Unicorn Overlord

Still having fun, nearing the end of Bastorias.

UO difficulty is a bit odd. Playing on Expert, and since the earlygame my only deaths are due to third-party loss conditions (which Hallowed Corne Ash can't even save you from, lol) which are often kinda hard to see coming. Which isn't really great. That said battles are engaging anyway. Short maps can't really challenge you too much because items let you stomp things, but in long maps the 10 item limit is definitely a consideration.

Phantasy Star 4

Completed with no helmets or items. The hardest boss indeed proved to Lashiec, since with no armour even Thunder Halberd 2HKOs everyone, as does Another Gate, so I'm healing all the time, and only have four Star Dews. Profound Darkness had me worried about losing at a couple points (Megid after Cancelling one-shots some people so every time the latter is used, a bit of luck is needed to have Wren outpace the boss) but I pulled through, Raja was clearly the best choice since his Blessing buff let me Chaz and Rika survive the physicals, even without shields.

Air Castle and Garuberk Tower were both tough dungeons. Frost Sabers (an enemy) are very dangerous in particular because if they get a turn at 50% health or below they will use Air Slash which as a MT physical does crazy damage. Best solution against more than one ended up being to have Rika cast Saner so that I'd then reliably outpace them next turn and blitz them down. Tonoe Basement was probably still the toughest ultimately; Chaz and Rune getting to hang out in the back and cast Rever if necessary after the fight ends is certainly a big help.

The shield decision is always the biggest one for equips in this game. Kyra always had two shields which tended to make her the tankiest PC (although I usually put Wren in front for randoms), Hahn/Seth/Rune/Raja too though that's unsurprising. I only bothered with shield Chaz for the brief sections lategame where he's alone (more on that below). Rika was the one who varied the most; in the first half of the game I often had her with one shield just to have someone who could take hits near the front. After getting the Silver Tusk and Thunder Claw her offence is just too good to curtail in randoms, so I always used two claws for them, but usually switched to a shield for bosses (notable exception being PD, as above).

I actually lost the Chaz duel with Alys's ghost/illusion which feels like it shouldn't happen. 2HKOed by someone faster! Even with two shields! Yikes. The loss of endgame armour is a huge hit. Anyway I solved that by using the Swift Helm itemcast to outspeed her, then heal and wait for a dodge with my boosted speed, RPGDL strats here.

Was fun! Never really had too much trouble at any one point of the game but it made for a pretty neat hard mode experience.
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Baldur's Gate 3 - Finished a second playthrough of BG3 with the Dark Urge. It was mostly an evil playthrough, but I did a lot of talking my way out of problems/lying to people rather than fighting everything I encountered.

I was a Lore Bard, Expertised all the Cha skills and used them extensively to slither out of fights or just to be a pain in the ass. Also Insight and Perception.

Spoilers ahead!

Some highlights:

-I chose the “fantasize about cutting off Gale’s hand” option, which ended up with me actually doing it. RIP Gale I guess.
-Sided with Minthara/goblins over the grove. Feels bad, and the plot is less rich after that due to not having tiefling NPCs, Karlach, Wyll, or Halsin.  I only had Shadowheart/Astarion/Lae’zel for a lot of the run, until Minthy joined in Act 2.
-One advantage of that, though, is that you get a lot of those characters’ unique dialogue with each other!
-Did Lae’zel’s sidequest which i managed to skip first playthrough. Good stuff! I really enjoyed the plot there. One thing I didn’t like though — Lae’zel still says “for Vlakaaith!” even though I betrayed her. Feels kinda silly.
-Act 2 again is a bit depressing because I had the dark urge to kill Isobel and did it. Bye Jaheira and Isobel and Isobel’s gay wife. I feel like this part of the game is the part that feels much emptier than it did first playthrough. No saving the rot. feelsbadman
-Did the Shar path for Shadowheart this time. My culty little pal. Again, objectively the worse route but I figured I’d pack it all into the one playthrough.
-Minthara is fun; very pragmatic and driven, and has basically no moral qualms about anything. I wish she had a little bit more, especially since her camp dialogue is glitched to talk about Gale all the time, even though I didn’t even meet anyone called Gale. LOL. She could be a GOAT character but she ends up falling short thanks to the decreased dialogue and lack of a character quest. I was surprised that she didn’t have more dialogue during the Orin fight. I needed my fix of toxic yuri. Her voice acting is super super super good.
-Also, did her romance. it is very brief and doesn’t really reveal that much about her. Very disappointing. :( she’s still my hot, evil wife though.
-Did Vampire Ascendent Astarion. Again, objectively bad choice, but it’s very fun to watch him chew scenery in the lategame.
-I accepted Bhaal into my heart.
-I gave Raphael the Crown of Karsus in exchange for the Hammer. Nothing could go wrong
-I sided with Gortash. I think it would have been cool if he was a PC, instead of him just dying. I really liked the Dark Urge’s tie with both Gorty and with Orin. It really adds an extra dimension to their stories, especially Orin who didn’t seem to have much in a ‘regular’ playthrough.
-One random highlight is when I lied to the projection that Lorrakon set up and told him I was a tax collector and he gave me his tax money. LOL
-It felt pretty good to tell the Emperor to fuck himself. Stupid slimy bastard.
-Speaking of which, I used my one shot of Power Word Kill from being Bhaal’s Chosen on him in the final boss fight after chipping him a bit.
-Ending was ‘make everyone thralls, except Minthy who will help me usher in a reign of darkness’. Definitely not a great ending or very fleshed out compared to the regular ending, but it was honestly what I deserved. Sadly, Raphael didn’t come and try to take my crown. I could have taken that bitch.

Gameplay notes:
-Still did the base difficulty. I think I’d want to have a full party to play Hard.
-Bard is a fun class. Cutting Words is quite cool and made a lot of things that were hitting miss. I mostly used the Inspiration on that. Having to determine that you will use Inspo at the beginning of the turn makes its offensive capability less useful than normal.
-For my extra spells, I took Fireball and Counterspell the first time (because I was missing Gale and Wyll, and Counterspell rules), and Misty Step and Shield the second time. Teleporting is good, as it turns out!
-Went with a Rogue/Ranger multiclass for Astarion, which is way better than just Rogue. The extra attack on turn 1 at level 3 + extra attack at level 5 really adds the DPS element that Rogue desperately needed. I did Thief/Gloomstalker. Two bonus actions a turn is pretty swell for stabbing and hiding and dashing. He could really shoot down enemies a lot better than the first time.
-Did Tempest Cleric with Shadowheart. Much like first playthrough, she peaks midgame with max damage Shatter and Spirit Guardian, but she’s always pretty good. GOAT against Ketheric.
-I did Champion Lae’zel. Generally worse than the Battlemaster because of lack of options to increase accuracy, but once she gets rolling with Great Weapon she’s still solid. Action Surge is also sexy, especially with the ease of Short Rest in BG3 vs. 5e DnD
-Minthy is generally very solid; high AC, divine smite, Vow of Enmity. All around very good.
-Using a smaller party makes long rests more common. Didn’t really push my resources, but might have on the higher difficulty!

Final thoughts:

Gameplay is engaging and compelling; combines turn-based/grid-based tabletop gameplay into a game format quite well. The luck aspect is a bit of a damper on otherwise excellent combat. I liked how they took some of the weaker spells and abilities in 5e proper and buffed them. Definitely not an easy game, even on base difficulty, and has a lot of tricky bosses that you have to adjust your strategies to beat. Raphael was probably my favorite fight (and not just because of the music, although it helps), but I also really liked Cazador, Orin, Gortash, the goblin leader, and a lot of other random encounters which ended up being quite challenging and fun to beat. I want to revisit the game on Hard at some point.

I also like how customizable your party is and how you can play around with different builds if you want. I used Bard and Paladin and they felt like they played very different roles in the party while both being incredibly useful. The combinations of characters and classes you could play seems like it could lend a lot of replay value and tinkering around with the multiclass system is something I am interested in.

Plot is a mix of standard DnD flair with mindflayers, which adds an extra supernatural/horror element that I really liked. I wouldn’t say the plot is amazing and I think there’s definitely some parts that could have been done better, but overall I was satisfied with the progression. It starts a little slow, and Act 2 does feel a little fillery at times, but I thought Act 3 does a great job of tying together the threads.

Characters are the highlight of the game. All of your party members have fleshed out motives, backstories, and opinions on the journey. I like how the game gives you a built-in excuse to have party members of varying philosophies and alignments, which allows you to have Astarion and Wyll, two people whose life philosophies and moral codes are diametrically opposing, together in the same party without it feeling stupid or out of character for either. My faves are Lae’zel, Astarion, Karlach, Wyll, and of course Gortash, who revels in being the slimiest tyrant. All of them have compelling backstories and fun interplay with the other PCs. Gortash is a weird mix of power-hungry tyrant and actually a bit optimistic compared to your average character of his archetype?

I think all of the PCs are pretty good, though; I ended up with a positive opinion of all of them, even Gale who is the whitest white man to ever exist.. Halsin and Jaheira are a little less compelling but still likeable. Raphael and Mizora are two of the other highlights from the NPC cast, but a lot of them are quite good. Isobel and Dame Aylin are a great couple <3. Really enjoy their defying fate energy and Dame Aylin is suuuper fucking hot. Really missed them on this most recent run.

The voice acting really lends a lot to this! The game’s voice acting is almost universally very good (aside from Cazador, who sounds like my trying to impersonate a generic villain); Astarion and Lae’zel and Minthara are all great, and Gortash and Orin and Raphael have the right amount of villain pizzazz to make them compelling. I also really like the character designs and the outfit choices, and I really like that you can use not to wear a goofy helmet if you get it. :)

Some less good things would be
1. the load times and crashing on the steam deck is definitely a problem. I had a few cutscenes also fail to run properly, especially in the Astral Plane/Shadowfell. there are some times when things glitched out, and sometimes spells would take a minute to kick in.
2. the music. way too much of the game has barely noticeable music which is a shame. raphael’s song being a big exception.
3. some weird glitches, especially involving minthara’s dialogue. she repeated this line to me about gale like four times and he wasn’t even in my party. very odd and immersion breaking.  really should be fixed.

Overall, though, I had a great experience! Really enjoyed this game and its characters!
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Unicorn Overlord

What if Vanillaware wrote a giant love letter to Fire Emblem but borrowed Ogre Battle's gameplay concept? Having a blast with this. I'm not the biggest fan of Ogre Battle or Soul Nomad's gameplay so I was a bit leery about this too but the game is such an evolution of their formula. The game really wants you to get into building squads, considering how they imteract with enemy squads, and even adjust your tactics (AI settings basically) to get the results you want. It ends up being a lot of fun.

The game has a damage projection system which tells you how the battle will go, even accounting for the RNG. It's a bit of an odd choice since if you don't like how a battle is projected to go, often a good strategy is to mess with the RNG in various ways (toggling on/off assist actions, for instance, or doing a different combat first). But it ends up working pretty well anyway? The game might be even better with a detailed battle projection that included the percentage chance of each individual unit in the battle to fall, but it could have been much worse with no projection at all since combats are too complicated to hand-predict, so I'm not gonna complain too much.

The story's a bit disappointing. There are glimmers there, but yeah, this is definitely more in the style of Archanaea or Elibe Fire Emblem. Really feel the game could have stood to be more ambitious here; the two main villains are both particularly dreadful so far.

On the other hand the graphics and animations rule. Octopath Traveler had me thinking I just don't vibe with sprites these days but clearly that's a lie, since the spritework in this game is beautiful. I spend more time than I should watching the battle animations because they're so great (fortunately the game lets you choose whether to watch a battle play out or whether to skip it each time, good QoL there).

Playing on Expert, currently in Elheim.


Other things:

Phantasy Star 4

Replayed this for the heck of it. Enjoyed it a lot, but I know the game too well at this point and I was craving something more difficult. So I'm now replaying this again with a challenge run of "don't use helmets or armour". This has the effect of making everything tougher, but randoms moreso than bosses; enemies can do loads of damage so it's important to find ways to kill random formations as fast as possible. Hahn and Gryz are even worse than usual because they're so slow. Up to the Air Castle. The hardest dungeon was Tonoe Basement (a flashback to my first playthrough where I missed the Tonoe shops), with Nurvus being a notable second. Bosses aren't as buffed relatively but Dark Force 1 having a multitarget physical made him nasty (which is funny, I'd consider him one of the easiest bosses normally) and Xe-A-Thouls having three of them is also scary, for all that I've beaten every boss on the first try so far. Lashiec having another multitarget physical will likely test that.

Metroid Dread - Beat the game in hard mode in under 4 hours, which is the "best" ending. Also beat it on normal mode in under 3.
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Starcraft

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dgd3A0dmw9E

Mini showcases a style against Terran where he gets Dark Templar basically every game.  He accepts a base trade from the Terran, kills the enemy scanners, and then holds off the terran army with DTs.  Requires pretty good micro to make sure mines from vultures don't just kill the DTs.

This is a response to a pretty specific build that has been popular among Terrans recently (5 factory 2 base push).  If they go for a science vessel, sniping all the detection doesn't work.
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Unicorn Overlord: Damn I can't say enough good about this game. Fixed stat growth instead of random FE nonsense? Yes please. Also there's no stat penalty for promoting units early, although it takes resources so you can't do it to everyone.

I ended up restarting and using all hired units. That way I can color coordinate my entire army and execute all the story characters like the merciless bastard I am.

My only complaint is that the time limit on some stages seems too short. I'm playing on Tactical if that makes a difference. Not too terrible, feels like they just need a little tweaking. Like 10 more seconds in some cases. Anyway, Hallowed Corne Ash are reasonably plentiful so it's not a big deal.
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Apocalipsis (Steam)

Played through both the main story & the side story.

I think it mostly tries to ride on its graphical style, which doesn't always look especially good in action. Outside that it plays pretty similarly to a worse version of Machinarium (which I already have a low opinion of).

The game is split into discrete levels where once you've solved whatever puzzle is blocking you from leaving you can't diegetically return to. You can return via a level select feature although this puts you back at the start of that level leaving you to solve the same puzzles over again. (For clarity, you can still return to the level you were up to via level select.)
Getting the non-bad (?) ending turns out to require you to have collected a bunch of non-puzzle-related items throughout the game. A little surprisingly, once you've actually beaten the game (and presumably got the bad (?) ending), you can actually just skip back to the levels containing these items (presuming you look them up, I guess it's not as simple if you don't) and pick them up, then return to the final level and re-complete the game with the other ending, rather than having to replay the entire thing.

anyway i thought that was surprisingly merciful

The main story has Harry taking an Orpheus-like role to rescue his beloved who was executed for being a witch. Then per the side story she literally is one, and not exactly a benevolent one. I don't have the capacity to understand exactly where you're trying to go here, Apocalipsis.


Dragon Audit (Steam)

Fairly short & simple 3D point/click-style adventure game which I enjoyed a decent amount. Contained more ribald jokes than I was expecting. Unfortunately had barely any unique responses for using the wrong items on things.

The graphics are fairly primitive but this is only really a problem in a couple of instances, the prime example probably being that the camera can start acting up when in confined spaces.

The story has been left open for a followup so hopefully one is made.


DUSK (Steam)

Horror-FPS which to some extent I enjoyed inversely to how heavy it was going on the horror. Somewhat correspondingly, my least favourite of the episodes was Episode 2 and my favourite was Episode 3 (which also had other things going on in addition to being comparatively less horrorful).

If they make a followup I'd likely play it.




The full version of Logiart Grimoire is out now, and they have added 115 extra puzzles to the game above the Early Access version - but unfortunately they're not included as puzzles in the core tech-tree-like gameplay mode, they're all siloed off in a separate area where you just access them through a list. This is quite disappointing.
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Discussion / Re: Marvel Snap - Cards, Analysis, etc.
« Last post by Tide on March 14, 2024, 03:50:53 PM »
Maybe we just have different definitions then. Your deck doesn't look like any Tribunal decks I've seen - it looks more like a Shuri mold but adding in Tribunal over Tasky so it goes wide versus tall. Not running Armor with Shuri? You're a much braver man than me. I've seen enough Negasonics that I'm always weary about making such a telegraphed play - let alone Shang. Do you like not see Shang at all?

1) I think with your deck, you're giving up the ability explode in power (we're talking like 50-100+) but adding in Shuri as an alt. No Onslaught and a bunch of big bodies - so yeah, no worries about Pigs or old Leech.
2) Your deck isn't a typical Tribunal deck that needs to cheat energy out. Not sure why you would discount this as an actual issue in Tribunal though. His power is pretty limited if you're not playing him out with force multipliers.
3) Again, are we playing in different pocket metas? I've definitely seen my share of Enchantresses. She's like a staple in Sera Miracle and yeah that deck isn't meta, but it's pretty frequent since it is easy to put together. Echo you can delay drop on Turn 5-6 if need be to basically kill the big stack. You don't have to slam her out on Turn 1.
4) I've seen Shuri decks cut out Cosmo after her nerf. It still comes in on occasion just not that often obviously since Tasky can't copy a card if you Cosmo the lane.
5) Traditional Tribunal definitely needs Magik. Try playing it without her. You just simply don't have time to play what you need. One Shuri deck that I came across in conquest had Shang/Abs Man as subs and which gave it a Turn 7 contingency play and was pretty amazing. I've since added that into my own deck. It lets you have a massive Turn 7 play on your own. But it's not really Tribunal.
6) Really? You never play against anything with Surfer? They carry Spiderman and Juggs pretty regularly considering Storm is also a staple in those. Stregon I'll give you. Just noting he is also bad for traditional Tribunal. Also if you're using Super Skrull, Rogue or Mystique, Magneto can totally spoil you as well and he's pretty common thanks to all the Thanos running around recently.
7) Traditional Tribunal doesn't really have time. The curve is extremely tight. Assuming no Magik, you're looking to play Wave on 3, Onslaught on 4, IM on 5 and Tribunal on 6. If you have Zabu and Ravonna, they help immensely by making the curve more flexible but playing them after 3 is pretty much a no-go. Also in general, I am not a fan of not playing anything in 3. Having your first card to be played on 4 makes for an extremely fragile win in my experience.
8) When are you playing Cage in traditional Tribunal? In Shuri...maybe. But I feel like you're better served playing Armor and Sauron over Cage personally. Certainly easier to fit on curve (Armor into Sauron into Shuri is obvious) where as Luke is more clunky (in your case, you just play Luke cause you're not running Sauron).

I rather try playing a deck to see how it works personally. I'm always a bit weary on stats. Between a combination of bots and bad players (yours incluced) and varying opponents on Collection Level and MLM Rank, that tends to skew the percentages.
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Discussion / Re: Marvel Snap - Cards, Analysis, etc.
« Last post by Captain K on March 14, 2024, 02:08:18 PM »
I run Ebony Maw, Baron Mordo (I know, he's kind of my mascot card), Maximus, Lizard, Luke Cage, Namor, Shuri, Iron Man, Crossbones, Red Skull, Dr. Doom, Living Tribunal. Main thing is you're not limited to playing one combo. Just putting up big numbers everywhere. Ebony Maw and Maximus on turn 3 is 13 power your opponent has to deal with in one lane. Namor can hold a lane by himself. Shuri+Lizard or Maximus works on turn 6 if you've got nothing else.

1) Hurts, but isn't a deal breaker. A third of my deck benefits from Spider-Ham lol.
2) Not applicable.
3) Nobody plays Enchantress. Echo you can drop Maw, Lizard, Skull on. Rogue is a problem at times.
4) Not applicable.
5) I don't need Magik, and if my opponent plays her it tends to benefit me more.
6) Nobody plays any of these.
7) Not a big problem, although it's not unusual to have nothing to play first three turns.
8) Luke Cage. Give me my money, honey.

Snap.fan has Tribunal at Seen: 5.36%(#79)
Won when Played: 61.13%(#15)
Won when Drawn: 51.93%(#186)
Won in Deck: 50.89%(#205)

Not amazing but not terrible certainly. I probably win 75%+ with this deck. I only play in Conquest though.
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Discussion / Re: Marvel Snap - Cards, Analysis, etc.
« Last post by Tide on March 13, 2024, 03:19:34 PM »
Well we haven't see any new patches to Jubilee and Magik yet, so I don't consider myself some kind of Doomsayer. Are we playing in completely different pocket metas? Tribunal in my experience is so incredibly fragile. The main issue with that deck is needing to play 17 Energy worth of cards and since you can't energy store, you have to cheat the cards out in some way. It dies to any of the following:

1) Anything that takes away Tribunal, Onslaught or Iron Man because your power just isn't competitive without one of these 3 (Spiderham, Moon Knight, etc.)
2) Anything that stops you from cheating cards out early. Even a disabled Ravonna can be bad because it means you can't play Iron Man on 4 or Iron Man/Mystique on 6
3) Ongoing hate tech - all of them are bad for you. This is also a case where Echo can be even played late because you almost always have to stack those core 3 cards together. Super Skrull let's you counter an opponent's Rogue and wins mirrors, but you just lose so badly to Enchantress. The deck can run Cosmo but that can cause you to lose in other ways if you need Jubilee or Iron Lad to pull cards from the bottom of the deck. PLus that's giving up a slot for added consistency with another energy cheating card.
4) On that note, Cosmo is also very mixed. As noted above, he stops Enchantress and Rogue but you still lose to Echo and you block your own Mystique, Jubilee and Iron Lad.
5) Location tech - Magik is almost a requirement. It is very bad for you if Limbo is disabled in some way
6) Any sort of Move/relocation tech - Since you need to stack the 3 big bois together. Juggernaut is bad. Spiderman is bad. Stregon is also bad.
7) A natural bad draw line really messes up your power output due to how fragile your curve is. Certain cards have to be played on certain windows or you just lose.
8) Related to the above, any sort of debuff is also bad because Iron Man doubles the loss and Onslaught quadruples it. So even a single -1 is bad for your overall power output.

You can't pack any protection of your own other than like Cosmo because the deck simply doesn't have the time to play a tech card other than on like Turn 3. But Turn 3 is also the best time to play out one of your cheats (Wave/Magik) since you're going to be busy every other turn trying to land the 3 big cards all together.

I'd be interested in hearing what version of the deck you are playing. Unless it's some sort of hybrid like Hela Tribunal, Tribunal has always been about going super tall. In this current meta with Discard and Destroy reigning, Tribunal does well because neither deck really packs any tech and the only tech they do pack is mostly Shang..which Tribunal normally is immune to since all their cards are under Shang's updated threshold.
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Unicorn Overlord: Liked the demo so I bought the game. Nice to see a tactics game that goes back to Ogre Battle rather than being another FFT clone. The variety of conditions you can put on your skills is quite nice. Also a lot of freedom in terms of which stages you can tackle when you wish.

Just got enormous boob girl back, cleaning up a bit on the first area before I head to a second.
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