• Tag Archives RPG
  • CHAINED ECHOES & GLOOMHAVEN

    Chained Echoes is an RPG-Maker styled kind of game with fun gameplay and exploration aspects alongside an absolutely terrible storyline. If I wasn’t so fond of both collecting things (the reward board is a nice touch) and the combat system which restores all resources at the end of each fight (highly encouraging ability usage) I likely never would’ve made it past the point your party members first join up. Just cleared the Flower Fields and Monastery area now and the plot has reached a new low… but collecting treasure chests and enemy drops remains engaging.

    As for Gloomhaven, which is the digital adaptation of a board game, I didn’t get very far at all. It reminded me of Darkest Dungeon, except with questionable balancing and even worse resource management aspects. And I hate resource management.


  • Final Fantasy XIV – DAWNTRAIL

    With all eight of my characters now through the Dawntrail main quest, I guess it’s time to post about it.

    As far as the storyline goes the first half of the game is mostly good. There’s is a bit of a hiccup in the third area when one of the other throne claimants does a complete personality reversal out of nowhere, but otherwise it’s pretty damn solid. Only one quest to say something dumb in chat and only a couple that require forced emote usage. The second half though… the second half is just a near-constant stream of cringe-inducing nonsense. They even add a child as a major secondary character toward the end (replete with a ‘follow the idiot child through a ruined cityscape’ quest).

    Sidequests are on the whole mostly better than Endwalker I think, with not all that many being purposely wasteful with your time. The role quests meanwhile are also pretty solid and even better can be rushed through pretty easily on secondary characters since now only the last quest in a line features a single-player duty.

    As for the new classes, Pictomancer has a pretty unique playstyle and just unloads tons of damage to both single targets and groups. Once you get accustomed to when to re-cast the painting spells it ends up pretty fun. Viper meanwhile is basically just a cross between Reaper and Monk, more the latter than the former after they got rid of its damage debuff. If you want a faster Reaper or a less fiddly Monk, this is your class.

    As for class changes:

    • Warrior and Paladin haven’t notably changed.
    • Dark Knight and Gunbreaker losing their damage dash is annoying, but otherwise they’re basically the same.
    • White Mage, Scholar, and Sage haven’t notably changed.
    • Astrologian is… pretty weird now. I liked the previous Card Draw system better, but this one isn’t terrible.
    • I don’t like what they did to Dragoon. Separating Fang and Claw and Wheeling Thrust just creates a hassle.
    • The new Monk is a bit of a shock, but I think it’s ultimately a slight improvement since there’s now less to keep track of.
    • Ninja is a bit better I think without having to worry about keeping up the speed buff.
    • Haven’t played much of Samurai, but it didn’t seem to have notably changed.
    • Reaper is unchanged.
    • Bard, Machinist, and Dancer are all essentially unchanged.
    • Black Mage has been simplified a bit, and I love the changes made to Umbral Soul… but it definitely takes some getting used to.
    • Red Mage is a bit more fiddly in the burst phase, which I’m not thrilled about.
    • Summoner is unchanged.

  • Baldur’s Gate III – Endgame

    It ended up not being quite as bad after dismissing my earlier hit percentage concerns. That said… it was still a chore to finish, to the point I skipped most of the Act 3 sidequests in the hopes of finally reaching the end.

    Compared to the first Act, both the second and third are a bit lacking in stability department (which considering the odd development schedule isn’t much of a surprise). The second in particular kind of falls apart if you don’t do things the ‘correct’ way. Fight the harpers instead of showing them the artifact? A whole bunch of broken reactions/quests is your reward. That aside the area itself is kind of dull with nothing much to recommended exploration, pretty empty as well with only a handful of setpiece battles (though it is nice to have conversational methods of defeating enemies).

    The third act also has an issues with sequence breaks. In this case, if you happen to kill Gortash as soon as possible, the Foundry and Iron Throne locations will spontaneously clear themselves. The Umberlee sidequest and Iron Throne also become impossible to clear if you don’t do them before the Foundry. So you’re locked into a very specific sequence of events if you want to avoid having unfinishable quests in your journal. The rest of pre-endgame Act 3 is pretty solid though without anything to complain about. Lots of areas to explore and sidequests to find.

    Which brings us to said endgame sequence: It’s real bad.

    Why oh why do I suddenly have to run through unending waves of trash mobs? And then fight a bunch of supersoldiers accompanied by a random dragon? And then fight the actual brain itself? It’s a massive, massive slog. Thankfully I had a bunch of Misty Step scrolls saved up so it was clearable first try… but seriously, what an incredibly unpleasant finale.


  • Baldur’s Gate III – First Impressions

    A bit infamous for being in development for so long, Baldur’s Gate III finally had its full release earlier this month. And I… I’ve bounced off it rather hard.

    In terms of visuals and gameplay it greatly resembles Divinity: Original Sin II, which is not surprising, while the characters and storytelling more resemble Dragon Age (which was unexpected). Despite liking both of those (Dragon Age II excepted) playing this one ended up subtly unpleasant.

    After thinking about it for some time I believe I’ve narrowed down the causes: Narrative and mechanics system.

    Narratively the issue is that right from the beginning the game acts as though you’re running out of time, when you are not. There is no time limit here. Yet all the early quests from the Mind Flayers, to the Druid Circle, to Gale’s ailment, to Shadowheart’s artifact keep reinforcing the idea that time’s in short supply… and I despise feeling rushed. It also clashes with the fact that many sidequests (particularly ones related to your companions) won’t progress unless you rest a ton.

    Mechanically the issue is one of base percentages. Apparently in this game having a 70% chance to hit is perfectly normal, which is an issue when in most other RPGs anything less than 95% means either you’re doing something wrong or the enemy in question is meant to have abnormally high defenses. So every time I see that relatively low chance to hit when targeting a random trash mob I immediately feel like I’m underpowered, and I do not play RPGs to feel underpowered. Quite the opposite.

    I’ll probably give it another shot later, now that I’m aware of what was throwing me off and can possibly look past it, but for the time being it’s not a game I can recommend.


  • ESO – 2 Month Mark

    With the second month of ESO+ having just expired, it seems like a good as time as any to take a break from the game to focus on some other stuff.

    At this point I’ve cleared all content up through the Summerset chapter (apart from the Trials, which I’ve decided to skip due to lack of automated matchmaking, and Blackrose Prison), maxed out all weapon, armor, crafting, guild, & world skill lines (besides werewolf), acquired all pack/bank slots, and reached Champion Level 659.

    Only thing I regret is not getting into the card game earlier (currently only rank 5). It gives so, so many crafting materials as rewards for playing it’s not even funny; legendary ones can even show up in the consolation prize. Just a massive missed opportunity there.

    I’ll probably go back sometime after FFXIV‘s next major patch to finish up the remaining story chapters, though I don’t think this will be a game I’ll be playing long-term. There’s a certain lack of variety that comes from only being able to slot 5 abilities at a time, the trading system is just flat-out horrific, and it kind of pisses me off how incredibly unbalanced the PvP situation is.


  • The Elder Scrolls -ONLINE-

    Picked this game up on a whim a little over a week ago after seeing it mentioned a new expansion was just released and noticing it had no monthly fees.

    The good news, for fans of the series anyway, is it plays exactly like a single-player Elder Scrolls game. The quests you can pick up are on par with those games as well rather than the expected ‘go here and kill/collect x’, a significant number of them with actual roleplaying choices.

    The bad news is that since it doesn’t have a mandatory monthly fee, it’s completely inundated with microtransactions. You’ll be rather frequently pressured to buy things like lootboxes and quality of life upgrades (like extra build slots, more inventory space, or portable shops) with real money. The small silver lining there is that the game’s optional monthly fee (ESO+) gives you an equivalent amount of premium currency to spend on that stuff in addition to its normal benefits.

    Speaking of, I strongly suggest grabbing at least one month’s worth of ESO+ if you end up enjoying the start of the game. There’s one main reason for this: The Crafting Bag. This provides infinite storage for all crafting materials. It will be absolutely necessary until you’ve gotten enough money to expand your inventory and bank space a decent amount. Access to all optional DLC is certainly nice, but not necessary at the start (once you’ve gotten to max loot drop level it’s a different story however).

    Aside from that, new players should also pick up the two free DLC immediately (Imperial City and Armory) and place the Armory item in your starter apartment. This item, if used correctly, will provide free character resets (which normally cost thousands of gold). While you only get two slots by default (getting more requires paying real money), that’s enough to make the first slot a ‘blank’ one with no skills/attributes learned while the second one can be whatever. I’d personally suggest a dedicated crafting build.

    Assuming you picked up the full game rather than just the ‘basic’ version (and you should’ve, since it costs more to upgrade later) another good thing to immediately do is pick up the Excavation skill and join the Psijic Order. The former because that’s the only way to get Mythic items and you’ll want to start leveling it immediately, and the latter because it will both help with leveling Excavation and grants access to the various Psijic caches scattered about (you should pick up the Thieves’ Guild skill line as well, if you decided to grab ESO+, for a similar reason).

    So. That’s all the fun stuff out of the way. Now the issues, of which for me at least there are mainly two:

    • 1) The player trading system is garbage. You need a third party tool/website to find anything, and you can’t sell anything unless you’re in a player-run guild (with at least 50 people) who’s paid to have a merchant spot somewhere.
    • 2) Researching traits for crafting takes forever. We’re talking days once you get to the fourth trait or so… presumably so they can sell more research boost microtransactions.

  • FINAL FANTASY VII: REMAKE

    Originally I had wanted to play this game when it first came out, but it was console-exclusive for a while and I haven’t played on one of those since the PS2 era. Then I sort of forgot about it while waiting for the PC port until suddenly remembering it last month.

    The game starts out quite good but somewhat quickly runs into a rather severe issue: Fate Ghosts. They’re terrible. They accomplish nothing beyond degrading the story and character behavior, so I guess the devs just really wanted a big set-piece endgame fight to go out on and couldn’t think of a better way to implement it.

    I wasn’t particularly thrilled by the combat system either. If you’re going to do real-time battles you should not force people to switch between characters during those battles in order to hit enemies’ weaknesses (or force you to use abilities for multiple characters concurrently for that matter). It’s just a giant pain in the ass and I was already tired of it by the fourth chapter.

    Normally this would be where I’d say that I won’t bother playing the next game in the series… but since the ghosts will presumably be absent it may just end up tolerable. Guess we’ll have to wait and see.


  • Fairy Fencer F: Advent Dark Force

    I bought this game sometime last year for… whatever reason… and only got to playing it earlier this year. While it was okayish at first, by the time things opened up with a full party of characters I’d mostly lost interest. And by this point it seems pretty clear I won’t be going back to it.

    Basically, what it reminded me most of (despite having a different combat system and little romance) was the Agarest War series. An inferior Agarest whose character interactions, amazingly enough, somehow come across as cringier than the fanservice in that game. Visually it’s also notably lacking with a bizarre mecha-like aesthetic that’s applied rather inconsistently. I guess it’s supposed to be a post-apocalyptic setting?

    Those issues of course could be forgiven if the gameplay were engaging; it’s not. It is in fact rather boring with not much in the way of either enemy or attack variety. A problem only compounded by the grind necessary to collect ingredient items or quest targets.

    So yeah, this is not a game I can recommended in any respect. Just go play Agarest 2 or the Neptunia games instead. They do the same sorts of thing better.


  • Final Fantasy XIV – Sixth through Eighth Characters

    First off, let me just get it out of the way that I do not ever recommend anyone creating more than five characters tops. Honestly, since the Data Center travel function got implemented there’s not really much reason to go higher than four (one for each location cluster). So then why did I create eight? Boredom. Completionism. OCD. Take your pick.

    The first of the ‘tertiary’ characters (who will stop advancing the main quest just after unlocking Purple Crafting scripts) was created on the Oceanian DC cluster primarily because I wanted to see just how poor a ‘poor’ server connection was. As it so happens it’s not all that bad at all. I wouldn’t want to play Samurai or bleeding-edge savage raids on it, but generally it’s only really noticeable in how little time you have to react to telegraphed AoE attacks.

    Aside from that the only things to be aware of are that Alliance Raid roulette is pretty dead most of the time (good luck getting anything other than Crystal Tower to fire), Shadowbringers 8-man raids take quite some time to fire, Frontlines only has a brief 1-hour window starting from about 2:30pm AWST time, and activity in general falls off a cliff around 8pm.

    The next was created in response to the addition of a fourth North American data center. Nothing much to say about this besides that the population seems to be too low to support frequent Alliance raids (or Frontlines at all). That’s not much of an issue though since you can quickly jump to one of the other three to do those.

    Finally we come to my first Japanese DC character (and eighth overall). I chose Elemental as the starting point since it was formally the ‘English-friendly’ one pre-Oceanian cluster… and that may have been a mistake. I was hoping for something a bit different in atmosphere or playstyle but there really isn’t much.

    The only things that stick out at this point are:

    1. You’ll occasionally get Frontlines ‘leaders’ who spam multiple sound effects every second
    2. No one uses Alliance chat in Alliance roulette
    3. Most people greet and sign-off with auto-translate phrases
    4. I have yet to come across people having a public conversation in a city center
    5. Tanks in 4-man roulettes seem more conservative with their pulls

    Potential future characters (once I get that eighth one up to the start of Endwalker):

    • Normal Elf: White Mage (gnb/drg/bard/???)
    • Hroth 1: Paladin (blm, mnk, mch, ast)
    • Hroth 2: Black Mage (rpr, drk, sage, dnc)
    • Black Lizard: Bard (arc, drk, rpr)
    • Sun Cat: Samurai (arc, drk, dnc)
    • Tan Viera: Sage (pal, mnk, dnc, rdm)

  • Legend of KEEPERS

    I can’t remember when it is I actually bought this game, but I only just got around to playing it this week.

    Generally speaking it’s similar in structure to Slay the Spire, as you progress down a series of choices before eventually reaching the final challenge of a run. Gameplay is quite different however since it’s not a card game. Instead, it’s more like classic turn-based RPGs with each enemy/ally being able to use one attack per turn.

    The base game comes with three player archetypes (although two of them have to be unlocked) each with their own perk trees and preferred gameplay styles. The default Slavemaster archetype appears to favor direct damage to morale and health while the Enchantress is more focused on debuffs and damage over time. The Engineer meanwhile (which I haven’t unlocked yet) presumably focuses on enhancing the trap mechanic. In addition to those, you can also buy three additional archetypes as DLC. Not sure how they stack up to the starters since none looked particularly interesting to me.

    General advice (when playing on Normal) would be to first focus on rewards that give new monsters until you have ~8-10 so you have a buffer for injury events or morale restoration, then switch to focusing on gold for training them all to higher levels. Manager upgrades are low priority for the most part since enemies should rarely reach the final area of a dungeon with a full lineup. Artifacts can be incredibly good… but they’re a crapshoot since what you get is totally random.

    Overall an okay time waster, but there’s definitely an issue with repetition.