General Gaming Megathread: What are you playing?

The Guardian spell was pretty awesome. I prefer Diablo 1 above all of the others.

*However... when I first saw the spawn [demo] release of the game, I played it, thought it was interesting, and decided that I would never buy the full game. I don't remember why this was. Several years later I found it on sale at Walmart, and brought it home——and played it for absurd length of time; lamenting not buying it years before.

 

Elaborate further.

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Diablo 1 had the best setting and art style.
Diablo 2 just felt like a sightseeing tour.
While there are certain mechanics I prefer in Diablo 1 fact is that it hasn't aged the most gracefully and could do with a remaster that updates certain controls, maybe add in a function to just decide which floor we want to go down to if we die for example when we enter the church up top.

 

I am not opposed to fast travel [so called], but Diablo features portal spells. The portal spell facilitates a direct return—at a cost. The reason to pay for it is to avoid the trek back via the long way. To add arbitrary level choice at stairwells would partially devalue the Town Portal spell, as well as become a non-magical exploit to bypass the possibly still populated routes through the dungeon.

Diablo (on the off chance that some players do not know)... does include unlockable direct paths back to town from the deeper levels, these passages allow the player to leave and return to areas many many levels deep below; bypassing all of the areas above them.

 

Gotta put up the town portal prior to dying though. Sometimes I forgot...

Also I specified only going down. Town Portal spell is still incredibly useful for going up to sell and buy things and having things identified. Maybe the player should need to find something at the end of a level to unlock the ability to select what floor they want to go down to.

 

Diablo 2 LOD is peak Diablo and one of the best ARPG imo. I do prefer Grim Dawn over it but i think that is the only one. I would suggest just finishing them up in the order.

This guy is clearly INSANE!

 

Got to some city and lost interest. So I stopped playing. that's about it.

 

Ah, so you never engaged with a "legacy dungeon" then? The open world is basically dogshit and not Dark Souls'y at all. It's the legacy dungeons that have that proper Dark Souls feel to them. Part of why I think it's the worst fromsoft game yet.

 

This is wrong but I understand why you said it.

 

Recently I have been playing a lot of JRPGs. The remake of Live A Live as well as some Super Famicom games that were never released outside of Japan but got a fan translation.

The Live A Live remake was pretty enjoyable in general even if some of the chapters were slower than the other. I think some redesign could have been done but then it would have been a remake any more. One chapter for example that involves setting traps could have done with a random placement mechanic. Other chapters I think lack replayability like the distant future chapter, it is a cool mix of 2001 and Alien but it is mostly a visual novel with the player going from plot point to plot point. My favorite chapter despite that it could be slow sometimes was the near future one because of its many manga influences and super robot theme. I so much like the Buriki Daioh theme once it starts.

The game is not very long which I think works in its favor as gameplay can become repetitive. Fortunately most people's skills can be unlocked pretty quickly and not much experience grinding is required unless the player wants more health. As there is no traditional shop mechanic the player also does not have to do fights in order to do cash though that does not mean that there is not some kind of resource gathering mechanic and in a couple of chapter there is the shop like trade-mechanic system which unfortunately has a level of randomness to it; you either get good, equal, or worse stuff for what you trade.

On a side note, I found out that this game was the director's debut of the director of Chrono Trigger. That would explain the structure but also why I enjoyed this game as I also enjoyed that title.


After that I started a bit searching around. I considered playing Final Fantasy 6 but I never really got into that game as I don't care for some of the content after I looked it up on Wikipedia. Yeah I know that spoiling things would ruin the experience but as I feel I have only so much time I would rather focus on games that really have my heart. I eventually settled on playing Cyber Knight 1 and later 2 for the Super Famicom. I was drawn to the series in the first place when I learned it was a mix between a space adventure and an RPG. When I first saw it it gave me a bit of an original Phantasy Star series vibe though a better description would probably be 90s sci fi anime. Plot of the first game is simple, a jump drive accident strands the main characters near the center of the galaxy and they must find a way to get back to Earth. The game starts somewhat linear before it opens up more later on, but progression remains a linear path though there are some side quests to do for better gear. the combat actually involves some tactics as the player needs to position their characters-in-mech suits depending on what weapon systems they use at specific locations and the position of an enemy also influences if a player can perform an attack. And as there are a variety of weapon systems some weapons work better on certain enemies than others. And the various mech suits also have different stats.

What I thought worked well in this game is that the player does not need to shop for items. Upgrades like improving existing weapons and armor and acquiring new weapons and defense systems is done by defeating enemies and salvaging their remains, or finding upgrades in chests. There is some bartering in the game but this is mostly for plot required items and some bonus items.

My main criticism with this game is a problem a lot of SNES JRPGs have, the high number of combat encounters. It is idiotic sometimes how often the player can run into an enemy. Another sort of point of criticism is the lack of healing a pilot of fixing a mech during combat. Healing and fixing can only done between fights. This may not necessarily have been a mistake on the designers but the annoying thing can be to run into an enemy who has a really powerful attack that drains both mech and player health pools. The player is also limited by the number of health kits and repair sets they can carry. The initial number is fine but the player can not raise the number and with how powerful some of the later enemies are this can become an obstacle as the player is then forced to return to their ship to repair their ship and restore their supply which means even more enemy encounters. And the option of running away is a joke half the time you use it. I think this could have been resolved by the player being able to find repair kits and health kits 'on the field'.
Edit: one issue with combat also is that it is very easy to 'loose' an attack. Not that the attack misses but it can not be performed because the enemy has either moved out of range for this particular attack, or has taken a position that should still put it in range but for some reason the game says the action can not be performed.
The frustration with enemies that are immune to your mechs' current selected weapons is that you can only replace them on your ship. You can't for example take a couple of them in your backpack and replace them in the field. And trust me, it gets really repetitive when you try repeated to hit an enemy with a melee attack or shoot them and they just shrug it off. Those plasma things on the lava planet can eat a #####.
And content wise it shows that the first game was somewhat of an early SNES games, both the visuals which are somewhat of a downgrade of the TurboGraph 16 version, and the storyline which shows a lot of promise but feels half finished after introducing some interesting plot points. The second game improves on both of these but I feel it could still have done a bit better in general.

I actually thought this game and its sequel are pretty good non Square JRPGs. I liked the themes, the storylines in general, and the gameplay outside of a few issues I think could have been designed better. I would love to see both of these being remade for today's consoles with some of the changes and additions that I mentioned.


I have also been trying out Treasure Hunter G, another fan translated game. Content wise it is a lot of JRPG staples, young kid (and his brother) go looking for their missing father and discover that evil has been unleashed in the world. Gameplay is quite different from a standard JRPG just like with Cyber Knight. Like that game the player must also move their characters across a 'game board' to position them to do an attack or perform another action. One thing that makes this one a bit weird is that there is the option to throw items from the inventory. When player characters are not close to each other items like health potions can not be passed on towards another, instead the item must be thrown to the character for who it is intended. Likewise the player can also throw certain items at enemies that can stun them for a while or prevent them from doing certain attacks.

The issues I ran into with this one is that it is very difficult to acquire money, at least in the beginning as most enemies (at least animals) do not drop money when defeated, which does make sense from a real world point of view. Why would a bee drop money when defeated. But this makes it hard to stock up on health items, not that it matters much as not all stores sell these. Often you have to be lucky to find one in battles.
Another issue I ran into is a lack of magic in the beginning. None of the characters start with any kind of health spell. It does not matter that early on but eventually you start running into enemies with an area effect attack and this is where the unpleasantness starts. Often when the battle begins the enemy with the area effect attack is on the other side of the board, spamming its attack on every turn. Not having any ranged weapon (well maybe I can throw the weapon the player character is holding but that leaves him unarmed), and no ranged magic like say a fireball or a lightning strike, and you quickly see your health pool dry out. Yeah, this quickly became very tiresome. And not being able to stock up on health items, not that it would help because of limited inventory, and battles became things you want to avoid.


After that I gave Metal Max Returns a try. Metal Max Returns is basically a West imagined post apocalypse imagined as a JRPG. The series was started by the guy who created or directed the Dragon Quest series. What is interesting is that it is in some ways a very open world RPG. You are still limited by the layout of the land and available equipment to fight enemies but in general you can go wherever you want. The player is not even out to fight a great threat, he just wants to be an adventurer, though there is a big threat in the game the player can take out. Despite being a PA setting the designers don't take it too seriously such as with the enemies. You have your standard mutant staples like giant ants and raiders, but also intelligent gun using monkeys, creatures from the black lagoon, creatures that are a hybrid between animal and machines such as caterpillars with gun turrets for heads, robotic worms with drills as a head, octopus tanks, a hippopotamus combined with a canon, dogs with guns and missile launchers fitted on their back.

Showing perhaps its Mad Max inspiration (which probably also inspired its name) is that the player and companions can fight both on foot but also in vehicles like tanks, a buggy, a truck. In fact it is in general recommended to fight in vehicles because of the higher armor and superior firepower. The player can modify these vehicles with various new parts such as better engines armor, primary weapons, auxiliary weapons, special weapons, target computer. This is something I have not seen often in a JRPG.

This is a game that should hold my attention but after taking out a couple of very powerful cannons that block the path to the next part of the world map I decided to take a break from MMR as I was a bit done with both the grinding and how slow the game's campaign goes. Instead I decided to give its sequel which was remade for the DS and translated by fans a try.
Metal Max 2 Reloaded starts out with a somewhat stronger story premise; the player is part of a group of mercenaries that tried to stop a gang of raiders from kidnapping people from a town, only for most of them including the player character's adoptive mother being killed by the raiders' leader when he sets them all on fire with a flamethrower. The player only barely survives and has to be healed back to strength before he or she (player can now choose to play as a boy or a girl) can decide to go after the raiders to avenge their parent figure and find out why the raiders are kidnapping people. That definitely gives a better motivation to go looking for the bad guys.

The game definitely plays a lot smoother then MMR but at this point I felt I had to take a break as going through all these games to find one that I really wanted to play was become a bit tiresome itself.

 

Ahh I forgot about that remake. Another one to add to the log. I am doing Dragon Age Origins on PC which is a lot better than Dragon Age Origins on 360.

 

Live a Live remake is pretty great.

 

I am rather late to Live A Live, I never played the translated original despite that I had the opportunity, and I only discovered the remake this year. It is probably my game of the year though, or at least one of my games of the year. I am also considering Front Mission Gun Hazard but I started that one a couple of years ago and only finished it this year.

I liked Live A Live remake so much that I decided to get the collector's editions packages, Switch and PS4 though the costs were rather high so I will not be doing this one for any other game soon.

Here is some of the content I got with the collectors' editions;



Mind you, all I really wanted was the robot model kit and the manga. Sadly the robot was sold out on the Square store and the manga was never released on it.

The white box contains a board game version of the combat system of the game. It seems all the main characters are in it represented as play pieces complete with their attacks and where you have to place the pieces in order for them to carry out an attack move. Sadly the rules are in Japanese.

Live A Live left me with the wish of making a sequel of my own with the chapters based on some of my favorite fictional characters like Conan and Solomon Kane, and ideas inspired by superhero comics and science fiction novels like The Forever War and Ender's Game.

BTW, if any of you have a Japanese friend who wants a free copy, please contact me.

 

I wish Solomon Kane got some more love. Conan is pretty one note.

 

Solomon Kane is rather unappreciated. I have recently read some of the Marvel comics again.

Edit: I meant "Underappreciated". The character is known, he is just not as popular as Conan.

 

Finally decided to hunker down and give the time of the day to Xenoblade Chronicles 3 and it's been great. It basically has the same job system of Final Fantasy 5 and i fucking loved that job system.

And i'll add that the voice acting is miles better than the previous game. It was great in the first game, but in the second game it just took a nosedive and it's genuinely unbearable a lot of the time. I was watching a friend of mine playing the second Xenoblade game and the voice acting was just terrible. So Xenoblade 3's voice acting is much better, even if they do weird pauses to fit the lip flaps (which were clearly made with the japanese version in mind).

 

Icewind Dale is pretty good.