• Tag Archives RPG
  • FINAL FANTASY XIV – Island Santuary

    The Island Sanctuary is Endwalker‘s version of the game’s ‘expansion-specific restoration project’. Sort of a more personalized version of the Firmament.

    For the most part this area is pretty straight-forward, but there are a few things it will help to know about in advance:

    – Everything can be built at Sanctuary level 9 (level 10 unlocks flying).
    – Pasture and cropland both max out at level 3 with 20 slots. Workshops and granaries also max out at level 3.
    – Each material has a ‘best’ place to farm it from. Logs/Clay along the river to the east and Limestone/Vines along the river to the north, for example.
    – Logs are in highest demand for building materials (upgrading everything will require ~200-300).
    – You’ll ultimately need 9 Garnets, 6 Spruce Logs, and 3 Silver Ore. All of which can only be acquired from specific daily expeditions.
    – There doesn’t seem to be a huge difference between the various animals you can capture.
    – Automating your pasture/cropland maintenance will not give you gathering XP.

    It’s an interesting idea, and fairly well executed… but I do wish there were more personalization options available. You don’t really have much choice with which buildings to construct, and the only visual changes you can make are to downgrade to an earlier tier.


  • Wildermyth

    Picked this game up around the same time as Gordian Quest.

    It’s more of a conventional tactical RPG with multiple storyline campaigns (featuring branching options) along with a randomized campaign function. That said, it also has a roguelike feature in the ‘legacy’ system. Basically, every time you clear a campaign the heroes used get saved and you can upgrade their ranks. Then you can re-use those heroes in legacy campaigns (storyline campaigns apparently require making new characters).

    The storytelling and questing aspects are extremely well done (if a bit odd in their comic panel presentation) while the combat is perhaps unfortunately a little simplistic with only three classes to choose from. I do like how the mystics can interact with the terrain though. That was an inventive touch.

    Basically what it comes down to is if you’re in it for the roleplaying then this game has quite a bit to offer you. If you’re looking for tactical complexity however you’d be better off looking someplace else. It may also be wise for those with a strong aversion to time limits to avoid, as time plays a fairly large role here… though I personally didn’t fine it onerous.


  • Gordian Quest

    Picked up this game on sale sometime last month, and it turned out to be a pretty good deckbuilding tactical RPG reminiscent of Slay the Spire.

    While that game’s a pure randomized roguelike, this has an actual story mode to it that plays out like a conventional tactical rpg. It’s also got tons of characters (each with three different decks to mix and match skills from), a wide variety of equipment (both randomized and static), and a ‘relic’ feature which lets you unlock permanent buffs to use across playthroughs.

    Finished the main campaign with a team of Jendaya, Alphonse, and Bertram. Artificer Jenda basically just set things on fire while the golem punched them and wasn’t particularly impressive aside from the Seismic Wave card. Headhunter Alphonse on the other hand is a beast if you go with his Assassin deck; Swift Kill and Assassinate with card draw and a 10-12 card deck results in a non-stop wave of death. I had Bertram go with Artillery, and that seems to have been a mistake. By the time the turrets got a turn Alphonse and the Golem had basically already killed everything.

    Some things to keep a look-out for are low level attribute, power, and resistance runes. Once you get to Act III they can be upgraded with Magic Dust (keep an eye out for this as well). Don’t forget about using your various maps to trigger exploration minigames either (visit Kyreal), as that’s basically the only place to find wandering vendors with otherwise rare/inaccessible upgrade items like Soul Sparks and Chromatic Shards. And don’t forget about Camping, since you can get 2 ‘free’ card upgrades per instance.

    Only other thing of note is that the last boss is pretty damn nasty. You’ll want to have as many buffs as possible along with high Chaos resistance and/or a bunch of health potions to deal with her waves of damage that trigger every 10 cards you play.

    So all-in-all it was an enjoyable experience, even if I did start to get a little burned out at the start of Act II.


  • Wasteland 3 & Triangle Strategy

    I picked up Wasteland 3 quite some time back on a whim, despite not being particularly fond of its prequel. Played up through clearing the Bizarre location, then put it down to potentially continue later… which occurred around the time I was playing Cyberpunk. So at this point I can safely say I’m not going back to it.

    It’s okay I guess? There’s just this weird balancing issue where you kind of have to max out a couple unique skills on each character as quickly as possible to progress smoothly, while your attribute progression will basically be identical across all characters. I’m not really a fan of the midwestern flavor either.

    Another game I was playing at that time was Triangle Strategy, which I ~think~ I heard about on some forum or other. And as with Wasteland my interest just kind of drained away one day for a similar reason: While the game boasts non-linearity in its storyline decisions it has extremely rigid character upgrade options. You can’t change a character’s equipment and their ability upgrade trees are ~75% generic attribute increases, which gets boring real fast.

    It’s damn near criminal that Final Fantasy Tactics continues to remain one of best examples of a complex, large-scale tactical RPG.


  • Cyberpunk 2077

    Picked this game up about a month ago when it was on sale for $30, since I figured that was an acceptable price for an overly ambitious/flawed large-scale RPG.

    It’s kind of weird. They’ve apparently got most of the bugs and glaring oddities ironed out by this point, yet there are still issues with general balancing, vehicle handling, and really the actual city itself.

    In regard to balancing you’ll very quickly start to overpower all your enemies if you bother with sidequests at all (or focus on quickhacking), but if you try and stick to just the main missions to give yourself a challenge you’ll end up broke.

    As for the city, the issue here is that despite being respectably sprawling and full of NPCs… it feels empty. Just a series of barren corridors lined with flashy wallpaper and inaccessible storefronts. More strange is that there’s a pretty massive amount of sex-related content on display, yet the player can’t interact with any of it beyond a single (yes, just one) prostitute and a ‘sex shop’ which sells unusable junk items with sex toy names. It’s bizarre.

    Despite those issues I managed to make it to the second act and complete all the various fixer side gigs which became available (level 40 aiming for this build), which range from extremely simple to mildly interesting. Although it did take awhile because I kept burning out. Only did two main missions so far in this part of the game (the two Goro ones), so can’t say much about how the plotline plays out just yet. Maybe it will make sticking around worth it.


  • FINAL FANTASY XIV – 5th Character & Patch 6.1

    Originally, the plan had been to create the 5th (and final) character on the new Oceania data center. The lackluster connection quality unfortunately made that option unviable though, leaving the remaining choices of creating one on the European Light data center or waiting for the upcoming data center expansion. A choice I put on hold.

    Then along came Patch 6.1.

    In addition to making some rather significant changes it just so happened to mark the Light DC’s Lich server as ‘preferred’ (meaning new characters get double XP for an extended period). Making it the perfect opportunity to round out my character selection. This dovetailed nicely with the revisions made to various early-game dungeons, giving me the opportunity to play through them naturally.

      Said changes range from minor to pretty major:
      Copperbell Mines seems shorter than it was and now the bosses are pretty straight-forward. They got rid of the annoying loitering bits, but the end result feels unfinished.
      The Thousand Maws of Toto-Rak was also shortened (by quite a bit), but the bosses remain basically unchanged. This results in being painfully aware of how half-assed the first two are.
      Haukke Manor only had its final boss altered (aside from the welcome addition of a new teleporter) and the change merely makes it slightly easier. Presumably because NPC party members wouldn’t be able to turn off the lanterns.
      Brayflox’s Longstop also had a final boss change for the easier; no more poison pools that let it regen health. Again presumably because the NPC tank wouldn’t be able to pull it out of them. It also has less roaming enemies in the swamp section.
      – A trait it now shares with the Stone Vigil dungeon, which in addition got a mid-boss overhaul. This change I have to say is unequivocally for the better, since the old fight was weird in that the tornado attack could make it impossible to interact with the cannons.
      – The formerly repeatable Cape Westwind trial meanwhile has been transformed into a one-off single-player duty. What was once the fastest trial is now a 3-phase slog. At least it makes all those comments about him being one of their best warriors have a bit more weight.
      Castrum Meridianum meanwhile has been massively shortened; in literal size, quantity of players, and number of unskippable cutscenes. Frankly, I think it’s been cut far too much. Only having one shield generator to destroy just makes it feel incomplete.
      – Finally we come to the Praetorum. What was once a nearly hour-long stop & go affair has been chopped up into 3 pieces. The first ends with the Gaius fight and for the most part feel decent enough. The only real problem being that the armor-riding sequence feels much too abrupt/unfinished. The second consists of the 2-phase Ultima Weapon fight which isn’t much different from the previous version. The last piece is the Lahabrea fight, which has been spun-off into a single-player duty with a really dumb ‘death’ scene thrown in for no apparent reason.

    All-in-all I can’t really say the changes were mostly for the better. Though I do suspect a few were necessary to get the new NPC party option to work efficiently.

    The other noteworthy addition in this patch (besides the new alliance raid, which is notable for not having any trash-mob pulls) is the PvP overhaul. Every class now has a completely rebalanced (and reduced) assortment of abilities while crowd control resistance has been removed.

    What this means for Frontlines is that battles are even more random then they used to be, with it now being possible to wipe out an entire team with a couple limit breaks. Not sure how Rival Wings is affected since I’ve never played it and never plan to. As for the Feast, it’s been completely replaced by new Crystalline Conflict matches.

    I’ve played quite a few of these by now (2 characters at gold rank, 3 at silver, 4 have the archfiend armor) and it seem like they generally go one of two ways: Either you utterly crush the enemy in the first minute or so, or your team can’t damage a fly and you lose horribly. Teamwork is important, but not exactly crucial like it was for the Feast. So long as you know basic things like ‘focus on the white mage’ and ‘retreat when heavily outnumbered’ you can generally do well.

    A pretty eventful patch all things considered.


  • FINAL FANTASY XIV – ENDWALKER

    Endwalker turned out to be a remarkably solid overall addition to the game. Right up there with Heavensward narratively and mechanically more or less equivalent to Shadowbringers.

    They have found new ways to waste your time though, mainly in the form of escort quests that prevent you from using mounts or teleporting while said quest is active. Fortunately you don’t have to ever worry about the NPC’s health in those quests. Experience-wise the main questline alone gives just enough to get a character from level 80 to level 90, though leveling others will take some time. While I’ve maxed out my crafting and gathering classes, only RDM and BLM are at 90 (with most of the others at 81) even after doing all the sidequests.

    As for the new classes:

    Reaper, though it ~vaguely~ resembles Dragoon with its focus on switching from side to back positionals interspersed with instant attacks, feels very much like it’s own new thing. It’s a very fluid combat experience and not overly complex.

    Sage meanwhile just comes across like Scholar 2.0. Instead of a fairy that indiscriminately heals, there’s a modal that heals your chosen target every time you deal damage. The rest is basically the same, though with a bit more focus on flat damage mitigation rather than shield strength.

    And then there’s Summoner, which got overhauled so heavily it’s basically a new class. You no longer have an autonomous pet which attacks on its own, but rather one that just sits there and does nothing but enable the use of a couple of your abilities. The class also no longer has access to any damage-over-time abilities. So what exactly does it do now? Well, first you cast a buff, then when that runs out you can use a summon as a one-off attack which then unlocks the use of additional summon-themed attacks. Ruby does the most damage but has a cast time, Topaz does normal damage with no cast time, and Emerald does the least damage with no cast time and half cooldown.

    It’s become a very simple, and admittedly somewhat boring class to play. But even if you don’t decide to play it yourself, you should absolutely use the /petsize “All” “Small” text command to avoid being blinded by summon effects.


  • FINAL FANTASY XIV – Eureka Update

    With the release of Endwalker imminent (~20 hours away for those with early access) I’ve been spending the last 3 weeks or so re-acquainting myself with the game.

    Originally this meant completing Eureka with my first character, which I had skipped, but that only ended up taking a week. Turns out you can level quite fast by just showing up at any monster spawn, not dissimilar to the Bozja experience. Wasn’t able to do any Arsenal runs though since that character happened to be located on the Crystal data center, whose BA instances are completely controlled by a Discord group. Everyone else refuses to enter the place.

    So I’ll have to wait for a server visitation option to get added to the game before I can clear that.

    The next week was spent loitering in Eureka to make a few million gil selling expensive (and very rare) monster drops and loot boxes. The Tracker site ended up a true godsend for that goal. Partway through though I started thinking about how Shadowbringers has a bit of quest development locked behind completing all 4 role questlines; none of my existing characters met the requirements to accomplish that since they all had their own job-exclusive themes.

    Basically there were two options: Either level some of the ignored jobs on one or more of the existing characters, or create a 4th character. I originally went with the latter both because I like the whole ‘progression’ experience and I wanted a character on a non-North American server (all three NA data centers had recently gone down twice). But on this last day I also decided to go with the first option as well.

    Which meant raising Gladiator and Archer on my Soul of Magic (who will also pick up the new Sage and Reaper classes). Why Reaper? Because the preliminary EW patch notes mention that it’ll have five sets of role-specific questlines. So I’ll need a melee physical DPS class to see its bonus story bits.

    Future plans then include raising Arcanist and Machinist on my Tank-specialist, and Gunbreaker, Red Mage, and Sage on my ranged DPS specialist. Finally, the most recently created character will raise Astrologian, Dark Knight, and Reaper (no ranged physical DPS though because none of them even remotely fit their theme).

    Doing all that should take a great deal of time. Theoretical far-future plans include ~maybe~ raising Fisher on the SoM to see all the crafting-related role quests and creating a 5th character on the upcoming Oceanic data center (if the connection strength ends up too weak I’ll go with the European Light data center instead).


  • Pathfinder: WRATH of the RIGHTEOUS – Conclusion

    The game‘s fifth chapter is essentially just an extension of the third (with roughly the same amount of content as the previous chapter), while the sixth consists solely of the final dungeon.

    Nothing much to say about that 5th chapter really besides that it’s notably easier than the 4th and doesn’t have the same lack of direction as the 3rd. Also, at this time, nearly all of the items that should be dropped by the various demon armies… aren’t dropping. The final dungeon meanwhile is significantly better than Kingmaker’s in the respect that it’s both short and straight-forward, but equivalent in that you’ll run into some incredibly annoying enemies.

    This first complete playthrough went Lich and aimed for (and got) the Ascension ending. The Lich’s final chapter events are weird and somewhat disconnected/unfinished, but the path’s ability progression and army management aspects are solid. The special ending by contrast wraps up quite a number of dangling plot threads, but could do with being a little less impossible to achieve naturally (simply having the Stargazer decree completion text actually mention the date range would probably be enough). Also not thrilled how there’s an automatic 5-minute timeskip between the normal final boss and the Ascension bosses with no opportunity given to prepare for the second fight.

    With that out of the way any future playthroughs will no longer have to worry about time constraints. I did however miss out on getting the ‘Sadistic Game Design‘ achievement due to an unfortunately necessary companion respec back in the 4th chapter. Meaning I’m not quite done with avoiding resting like the plague and clearing sidequest areas with an exhausted party.

    Next up are simultaneous Angel/Demon playthroughs to flesh out the exploration/area listing I’m writing up that will be similar to the one I did for Kingmaker. Then hopefully on to finishing the Aeon playthrough that’s been languishing at the start of Chapter 3 before tackling the remaining mythic paths (probably doubling up on Trickster for Swarm, Azata for Gold Dragon, Aeon for Devil, and either Angel or Lich for Legend).


  • Pathfinder: WRATH of the RIGHTEOUS – Chapter IV

    WotR‘s fourth chapter is the equivalent of Baldur’s Gate II‘s visit to the Underdark. You leave the kingdom management behind for a more standard RPG experience in a tiered cityscape.

    Size-wise it’s about the same as the Prologue combined with Chapter I, and stands out mostly for some prominent difficulty spikes. You’ll have streetside encounters with spell-happy or insanely overleveled demons and quest-related encounters with overbuffed enemy after overbuffed enemy. It’s pretty unpleasant all things considered.

    The other main feature of this chapter is the actual area itself. Instead of having a static map the buildings will change position based on which way your camera is rotated. Personally I thought this was pretty cool, but there are more than a few who seem to find it infuriating. More unambiguously annoying is that the game expects you at this point to have someone who can repeatedly cast Dimension Door to reach all the otherwise inaccessible rooftops. Usually you’ll find loot (often pretty damn good loot), though in one case there’s a battle with random enemies and in another there’s a superboss.

    Honestly I found the entire experience draining and can’t wait to get back the world map so I can start moving my armies around again.