• Tag Archives RPG
  • the Outer Worlds

    A combination of New Vegas and Bioshock with a No Man’s Sky aesthetic, this game takes place in a hellish corporation-first reality quite similar to our own.

    While shorter than it looks based on the navigation map (you’ll spend the vast majority of your time on Terra 2 and Monarch), there’s plenty of stuff to do (despite missing the entire Roseway section I still managed to hit max level at the start of the last area) and quests to complete. Quests which are good at giving choices (you can play as a savior, a money-hungry mercenary, a corporate bootlicker, or any combination thereof), with even combat-centric ones often being accomplishable through stealth.

    There’s not much reason to skip the combat though. It’s pretty fluid with a more active iteration of the VATS system, only really stumbling when it comes to dodging… which is not implemented well at all. The companions are also pretty good at killing things while not suiciding themselves.

    The loot situation is a definite low point however, bogged-down as it is with innumerable junk items/consumables and tied to an equipment degradation system. See, you have repair your equipment (fairly often) with parts acquired from breaking down equipment. This leads to finding a massive number of generic guns laying around which clog up your inventory until you take the time to manually break them down; they should’ve just increased the durability rather than flooding areas with dreck. The ‘unique’ items aren’t very exciting either.

    All-in-all a perfectly fine RPG worth checking out if you’re a fan of Bioshock-like messaging or/and happen to see it on sale for $20 or so.


  • Assassin’S CREED: VALHALLA – Conclusion

    Oxenefordscire ended up more like the beginning of the midgame rather than the midpoint of the game itself.

    While exploration and combat never changes from that point, the main questlines take a hard turn into railroad central. Early main quests are good at giving you the illusion of choice; later ones not so much. This works on a thematic level (the whole unchangeable fate/destiny thing) but it’s not a lot of fun to experience. Oh, I guess there was one change in the exploration aspects: You’ll want to clear all 10 Anomalies before completing the Norway quest that sends you to the far northeastern point of the map.

    Ultimately ended up at 142 hours with 94% completion, all areas cleared, and 65 Mastery points. I never did find any Black Bears or Wolf Fangs for the hunter requests though (or small Sturgeons and big Redfish for the fishing requests), and had to look up the location where to use those various Mysterious Tablets (the area is instantly recognizable, but also easily overlooked since there’s no treasure chests there).

    One final thing:

    If you’re experiencing random freezes, try installing the “Visual Studio 2015, 2017 and 2019” C++ update. The x64 one fixed the issue for me.


  • Assassin’S CREED: VALHALLA – Midgame

    With roughly 50% of England cleared (Oxenefordscire, Lunden, and everything lower level), 7 zealots killed, 11 Order members killed, all non-feast buildings constructed, silver equipment, and 205 skill points this seems a decent enough place to mark as the midpoint of the game.

    With ~55 hours invested so far it’s quite large, larger than it seems because there’s also an Asgard ‘dream world’ map (cleared that too) along with apparently a Vinland area (haven’t gone there yet). What’s really remarkable about this is that each area so far has felt pretty distinct in both the landscape and questing departments, all of which was enjoyable until the bizarre Odyssey-like change in the Eivor/Sigurd dynamic that occurs in Oxenefordscire.

    Combat-wise I’ve been using heavy dual-wielding. Started with a greatsword & dagger combo, switched to a spear & dagger combo, and then finally settled on a greatsword & spear combo (using the Dual Swap skill depending on whether it’s a boss fight or not). It’s extremely effective for plowing through enemies I can’t assassinate/headshot ahead of time (I do however still miss the 3-enemy chain assassination ability quite a bit).

    There’s no shortage of skill points (and you can respec whenever you want) so there’s not really any need for skill breakdowns, though Brush with Death and Advanced Assassination are godly, Explosive Corpse and Battlefield Bolt are garbage, Counter Roll is kind of sketchy since you need to dodge into attacks for it to work, and Auto-Loot is just plain nice to have. Abilities are a bit trickier. I’ve been rolling with Valkyrie Dive (great quick stun), Rage of Helheim (you have to hold the button to connect), and Throwing Axe Fury (crowd control). Bow abilities I’ve mostly been ignoring apart from Powder Trap (to blast through weak walls).

    As far as settlement buildings go, some are certainly more useful than others. The Blacksmith (equipment upgrades), Hidden Ones Bureau (quests, targets, rewards), Hunters’ Hut (quests, rewards), Seer’s Hut (quests), Museum (quest, rewards), and Fishing Hut (rewards, at least one Mystery event requires the fishing line) are probably the most important. The Barracks (cosmetics), Tattoo Shop (cosmetics), Shipyard (cosmetics), Stable (cosmetics, don’t have to travel for horse training), and Trading Post (don’t have to travel to other cities to shop) meanwhile are all nice to have. The feast-buffing ones are obviously situational (although the Bakery has a couple quests), and the Cartographer is completely useless if you happen to be the exploring type.

    At some point you’ll also get an Opal Shop for free. This serves as a method to buy Cash Shop items with in-game currency rather than actual money. On the positive side of things this currency is renewable through simple daily quests… on the negative, these quests award 5 opals a piece and you only get two a day (a new piece of equipment costs ~130 opals). So while you ~can~ technically get these pseudo-DLC items for free it’s not exactly something worth obsessing over (and besides, there’s plenty of equipment/customizables already in the game).

    All in all a very impressive showing so far even with the recent main plot hiccups. The only other thing I can really complain about is the inability to assassinate zealots the same way you could assassinate mercenaries in Odyssey. Oh, and I guess it’s also a bit annoying that the most efficient path forward is to complete the main questline in each area before exploring; it reduces backtracking and some items don’t appear until a quest triggers them (if you see a chest marker on your map that doesn’t have a related item for instance, chances are it’ll appear later during a quest).


  • Assassin’S CREED: VALHALLA – First Impressions

    The follow-up to Odyssey, Valhalla trades ancient Greece for medieval Europe (specifically Norway and the Viking invasion of England).

    The exploration aspects remain pretty much identical, though points of interest have been streamlined/condensed for a far less cluttered experience and it doesn’t appear to be possible to highlight enemies while in Bird View any longer (I suspect the ranged ability which automatically highlights enemies replaced it). You also now have to manually click on a chest marker if you want it shown on your compass rather than that happening automatically.

    Combat on the other hand is a bit different, with boss fights now being geared toward counters/parries and slower deliberate fighting instead of hectic hack & slashing (random trash mobs can still be attack-spammed into oblivion though). A particularly interesting choice is the implementation of a stamina system which drains when you dodge/block, use a power attack, or miss with an attack, but refills when you connect with normal attacks or just move around normally. This encourages a more engaged, hybrid playstyle and avoids the trap Elex fell into.

    The biggest change though is the equipment system: It’s been drastically simplified so that there’s only one or two varieties of a particular weapon or armor piece. Rather than continually finding new randomized variations with slightly better stats, you instead directly upgrade whichever particular weapon/armor type you want to use. I’m not sure how I feel about that just yet considering my fondness for collecting things, but it does make sense from a gameplay perspective and makes finding a new weapon something of a special event.

    All-in-all, at this point with Rygjafylke cleared (make sure to periodically check your map at its most zoomed-in setting to catch any resource chests; they show up as faint gold specks), I’m pretty well satisfied with this incremental upgrade so far. We’ll see how things progress when the assassination ability is finally unlocked and the action shifts to England.


  • Kingdoms of Amalur – Endgame

    Yeah, the game really falls off a cliff once you break the siege.

    I avoided the maxed level problem this time around by ignoring the two (formerly) DLC areas and not using Reckoning Mode at all, but that doesn’t solve the issues plaguing the second continent. Chiefly among them being the abundance of enemies that appear out of thin air and absolutely garbage sidequests. If you do decide to keep playing post-Siege, I’d strongly suggest sticking to the main questline while ignoring all distractions. Then just go and clear the Pirate area afterward (maybe the Teeth of Naros as well, though I’ve never bothered with it)… or just do the first continent and bonus areas while skipping the second entirely.

    It was kind of nice being effectively invincible thanks to the semi-overpowered armor crafting system while having the ability to kill 3-6 enemies at a time with a single Mark of Flame. But then again there was no reason for all those enemies to keep appearing out of thin air to begin with; throwing hoards of trash mobs at the PC is a hallmark of bad design.

    So is the end result worth paying full price for? Hell no. Not when it was first released in 2012 and certainly not now. If you want to play it, best to wait until it’s $20 or less.

    Some tips for if/when you do:

    • Weapon abilities max out at 3, while all other abilities max out 2 over their stated limit.
      • Meaning, combined with the rewards for completing the 3 main Faction questlines, you only need one piece of +Skill equipment.
    • Once prismere equipment starts to drop it’s time to switch from selling excess equipment to salvaging any green/blue pieces you find.
    • Nearly every location on the map has a quest tied to it. So, pre-Siege, avoid exploring areas before you find the relevant questgiver to reduce backtracking.
      • Post-Siege, the questgiver is often located inside the location.

  • Kingdoms of Amalur: RE-RECKONING

    I remember playing Kingdoms of Amalur years ago and enjoying myself quite a bit, only burning out after reaching max level somewhere in a badlands/desert area after having completed the Pirate-themed DLC and building a Keep… or something like that. The memories are vague and looking through Wayback Machine snapshots for what I posted about it at the time (pre-server merge mishap) hasn’t turned up anything.

    This remaster, as far as I can tell from those fuzzy memories, is effectively identical.

    I’ve seen people complain about technical issues regarding slowdown, but since I generally don’t play with extraneous bells and whistles like AA/AS I haven’t noticed anything beyond occasionally long loading times when moving from an interior area to the main map and some choppiness when running through multiple groups of enemies who end up attacking each other (forming a 10+ mob). I suspect that if you disable the advanced graphic options in-game and enable them directly through your graphics card instead it might sidestep some of the more severe cases that people have reported.

    Regardless, I’m having fun so far and will hopefully actually complete the game this time around.


  • Book of DEMONS & Some Other Games

    Book of Demons is a hack & slash game with some minor roguelike elements modeled on the first Diablo. One greatly simplified into a mobile game format where you walk along rails while clicking on anything in your ‘light radius’ to interact with it, and equipment/skills are represented by upgradable cards that you can assign to unlockable action bar slots.

    Despite its simplicity and lack of depth (leveling up gives a choice between +1 Health or +1 Mana), it ends up a pretty fun diversion in the vein of Candy Crush for when you have a few minutes to kill. Not sure what sort of longevity it’ll have though since the levels are so far are all pretty similar (up to the Cook quest boss) with the abilities of various enemies occasionally crossing over into ‘bullshit’ territory.

    As for the titular “other games”:

    • Sword Legacy: omen – I installed this ages ago, played the first battle or two, and then put it aside out of general disinterest. I can safely say now that I have no intention of ever touching it again.
    • MONSTER HUNTER: WORLD – Got through the opening, messed around in the training area for a while… and then promptly uninstalled when I discovered all the hunts have time limits.
    • The: QUEST – A game styled after classic first-person RPGs (think Might & Magic X: Legacy), it felt to me both empty and overpopulated. Leave town and there’s a whole bunch of nothing in every direction, yet there’s also an inexplicably large number of scantily-clad archers waiting to kill you. There’s just a pervading sense of unease about the whole affair.
    • DEEP SKY DERELICTS – After spending a minute or two wandering around the first ship finding a whole lot of nothing, I ran into a battle. There I discovered that every action you take in combat reduces your Energy level (run out of Energy and you die; moving also costs energy). I have no interest whatsoever in dealing with such severe resource management bullshit.
    • Celestian Tales: OLD NORTH – The characterizations are all pretty painful and the visuals are notably lackluster.

  • STAR RENEGADES

    Structurally, this game is similar to Slay the Spire: Traverse three semi-randomized branching paths capped by a static boss fight, fighting turn-based battles and collecting items along the way, concluding with a much smaller endboss level.

    As a roguelike, you’re expected to play through multiple times with different characters in order to unlock various features such as new classes, class variations, individual character bonuses, a larger pool of possible equipment spawns, and a few relatively expensive general ease of use buffs (e.g. additional merchants). Like StS it manages to avoid feeling like these unlocks are a grind or the main purpose of playing; it’s perfectly possible to win with the starting characters on your first playthrough. The endboss changing after every win is a particularly nice touch that provides a remarkable amount of variety.

    Combat is a pretty straight-forward affair with everyone (usually) getting one action a turn and each action having a different speed value which determines the action order. Where the strategy comes into play is that if you attack before your opponent, that attack will end up a guaranteed critical hit. Whereas criticals in most games are just a simple +% damage, here each attack has its own specific bonus and each critical hit also refills the equivalent of your mana pool (used for free actions or combo attacks). Which means making sure you attack before your opponent is essential to success. A task assisted by a stagger system which lets you delay an enemy’s action a certain number of times.

    All in all it provides a remarkably well balanced mix of randomization and skill. Oh, but do be aware that the style of humor is extremely irreverent (think Cosmic Star Heroine).


  • Atelier Lulua: The Scion of Arland

    Breaking with tradition, the 20th Atelier game is a continuation of a previous trilogy rather than the start of a new one. Fortunately, familiarity with the events there isn’t required to follow along here (though Ficus’ character arc won’t make any sense if you aren’t familiar with Atelier Totori).

    Mechanically speaking there’s nothing to complain about. The Alchemy system is solid, the combat is engaging, the exploration areas aren’t over/undersized (and subareas can now be traveled to directly), and it doesn’t take hours of grinding to acquire the best traits to put on your equipment.

    The game’s problems revolve entirely around its plot developments and character behavior: It features some of the most extremely cringey cutesy Anime bullshit you can imagine. Every other line of dialog is delivered with an exaggerated expression, a dumb pose, or both. It’s full of friendship power, event battles that act as though they were hard/dangerous when they weren’t, and extraordinarily dense idiocy. The character design is also uneven; Lulua/Ficus are purestrain Shoujo, Aural/Niko are purestrain Shounen, and Eva looks like an escapee from The Nightmare Before Christmas (also, the assorted generic merchants’ appearances don’t match their voices).

    I made it to the end despite all that thanks to a fondness for collecting things and crafting overpowered equipment… but it was a real struggle that I wouldn’t recommend to anyone who doesn’t happen to enjoy watching generic daytime magical girl shows.


  • Atelier: Mysterious Trilogy

    The first of this trilogy (apparently a sequel to the Dusk Trilogy if Logy’s appearance is any indication) is Atelier Sophie ~The Alchemist of the Mysterious Book~. It starts off very laid-back and slice of life-y, which isn’t really a problem. The problem is that the combat system and gathering areas feel unfinished and are kind of a chore to engage with. Combine that with having to grind requests to advance the plot and I ended up dropping it shortly after the previously mentioned Logy appearance.

    The second, Atelier Firis ~The Alchemist and the Mysterious Journey~, reintroduces the time limit found in earlier Atelier games (you have a year to complete the ‘main’ quest; there’s no limit to continued exploration afterward)… except now time passes constantly. Simply walking around the map causes time to pass. That’s a hard no from me.

    Atelier Lydie & Suelle ~The Alchemists and the Mysterious Paintings~ is the third game, and much like Shallie it brings back a large number of characters from both previous games. The plot here is more self-contained though and not having played through those doesn’t seem to result in missing much here (Alt will be a mystery until his last friendship event triggers and the couple mentions of Oskar won’t make sense if you haven’t touched Sophie). There’s no time limit (aside from the repeatable/ignorable requests and one particular, very simple, main quest) and it doesn’t require any grinding to progress the storyline (though unlocking the True End does, effort I feel is wasted due to the conflicting messaging). The only problems are that the gathering areas are much too large (not lifelessly so however… with one notable exception which was presumably intentional) and pretty much everything relating to the Ice Palace painting is pretty bad.

    So the first two are skippable depending on your tolerance for, respectively, lack of direction and feeling rushed, while the third is quite good and has nearly all the elements of Ryza already in place.