Brb making “battering bones” statblock

Totally reasonable. Not every game is for everyone, no guilt!

It gets better, but that does continue to be a thing. Part of the reason it’s so heavy is a bit of a spoiler, so I’ll leave it to your discretion:

That being said, either way the game is somewhat chatty. Even if it gets better, it never completely goes away.

Gotta love that classic “Not only will this kill you, it will hurt the whole time”

There’s actually a Wizardry mobile game that dropped recently that is technically a gacha game with permadeath, but is actually pretty good and I’ve yet to put a cent into it. Wizardry Variants Daphne. I wish the dungeon layouts were a little more complex, but I’m not that far

Yeah I think the goal of the game was “make a single player game that makes the player feel as though the are collaborating to build something bigger” and I strongly experienced that feeling. Using tools left by other players, looking for places I could place tools for others to use that didn’t have an easy traversal option otherwise, especially the big projects like bridges and roads, which gain a lot of their required resources from others, felt like I was helping build back a world to make it better for everyone. That success, saying “we want the player to feel x emotion” and succeeding in that goal? That’s art. The soundtrack is outstanding as well.

F-Zero GX is the goat, but nintendo didn’t make it! It’s actually made by Sega’s AV (amusement vision) team, now known as ryu ga gotoku studio

You assume many Americans aren’t considering money itself a form of god and therefore that having vast wealth is therefore virtue

What? Polymorph might disable the target, but if its a single target boss fight, what does that help? Whether you kill the transformation or wait for the spell to time out, the result is the same

If you enjoyed the sombre tone of some of the other media, I’d encourage giving Halo 3 ODST a shot. Invasion of earth from the perspectives of more typical marines, not a supersoldier. It’s still very clearly halo, but the vibes are completely different.

This has been on my radar for a while, but I haven’t picked it up yet. Good to know that it’s at 1.0 and was previously expecting such progress wipes

Oof. Good to know, especially since you can’t buy mana restoration items and need to farm them. Thanks for the heads up

Seeing these remarks on the H2A soundtrack after having previously gone back and forth a bit on it makes me feel guilty, hopefully the callout of the difference didn’t lessen the experience. I don’t know about you, but I’m often blissfully ignorant until something just slightly negative is pointed out and then it becomes a bother. Glad you enjoyed it, either way! The H3 start was jarring for everyone though. I think one of the books gets into the details for what happens between 2 and 3, but not any of the ones I read. The short version is “Chief really wanted to go home to earth, so he got on a covenant ship going home. When they didn’t go straight to the surface, he tried to do the sonic adventure 2 opening and surfed on a door from orbit down to the ground”

You’re not the only one working your way through it. There’s so much I like about it, but, damn, it’s hard to love. I just got to act 4, myself, and keep having the thought “this would be nice to have a friend who has played the shit out of this game to give me some guidance here and there”

FFTA was the game that got me into trpgs. Absolutely love it. Character progression feels so good and I love the ability to pull a little bit from one job to another via the way the skills system works. I’ve been playing Tactics Ogre Reborn lately and it certainly has a much better plot, but I’d like it if character growth was closer to FFTA.

I have a lot of opinions about the plot to FFTA though. Marche frankly feels like the villain to me. His stated goal is literally to destroy the world.

Yeah, I THINK the reason this was cut is because some of them are shot a little differently and actually have slightly different run times

Yeah, admittedly I did play the originals on release so nostalgia is certainly a factor for me. I did have the thought “maybe it’s a licensing issue?” Until I realized the tracks are still in the game, just only if you’re using classic visuals. I would have liked the ability to shift between classic/remastered visuals and audio separately (though I think with the remastered cutscenes at least, this wouldn’t have been an option)

May be worth noting that, for the licensed music, in the game it’s all instrumental versions, regardless of whether the track has lyrics or not. Searching for the tracks online will probably provide versions with lyrics where applicable.

If you’re enjoying ARK, that’s the game palworld was inspired by, they’re extremely similar. Personally I found that palworld was much more respectful of my time, whereas ARK wanted me to play it like a full time job if I wanted to have any dinosaurs.

The improved graphics look great for H2A, especially cutscenes, but it always bummed me out that it also changes the soundtrack. The original OST is just worlds better, with works from known artists (Incubus, Hoobastank, Breaking Benjamin), and the new music is just much more generic and mid.

I’ve been playing Tactics Ogre Reborn and just got to act 4 and… Man I really want to enjoy this game, but it’s difficult, and the board is rarely even in a way that’s frustrating. For example, casters are clearly stronger than martial units, but they need mp. Pretty typical. But, during combat your units can pick up cards that give buffs like increased mp generation or increased activation of automatic skills (which do things like generate mp, cause buffs/debuffs, one of them fully doubles healing done for the turn). I like the card system, somewhat, because it pressures you to move up as opposed to bottlenecking and defending set points whenever possible. But, once you’re a little way into the game, enemy casters come in with four cards, one of increased magic damage, one of increased auto skill proc, two of mp regeneration. Now your casters are weak as shit and need to run to the front lines to get the buffs necessary to cast high level spells more than once every few turns, while the enemy casters are goddamn artillery pieces that can attack from across the entire map. Your martials need to run through artillery fire and break through enemy tanks to target the back line (oops there are skills that tanks have that restrict movement so you have to kill them) and your casters can’t cast more than once every handful of turns, and can’t consistently benefit from the “your spells have longer range” auto skill, so in some fights you’re just beholden to rng of your enemy skills procing and cards you want/need showing up in places your casters can access without ending in a meat grinder.

It’s the kind of game I wish I had a friend who had beaten it a couple times to give me advice on. I’m open to looking up builds and strats online, but since it’s a remake of a game that was originally on SNES and then PSP, a lot of balance changes have occurred and sometimes you’ll find a forum post going on about how good xyz build is, only to later find someone else remarking “oh yeah that worked amazingly on the PSP version but it doesn’t work at all anymore”