What games are you playing 2: The revenge

Marth

Well-Known Member
I played Sakura Swim Club as a short intercede, because I apparently had like a gazillion and one Sakura VNs in my library from a Humble Bundle or something

It was 2 hours. It was lacklustre, bare-bones cookie cutter story that's obviously more focused on girls with big boobs and ecchi plot progression (and I guess porn if you go looking for it) than any real plot. The end.
The vast majority of the Sakura series is like that, to be honest. There are a few almost-decent/okay games and VNs in their considerable list of them, but for the most part it's nothing special.
 

chronodekar

Obsessively signs his posts
Staff member
... Tales of Arise ... To prove to myself that I'm not addicted to the game, I'm going to keep my PS4 off till the weekend - will pick up the game then.
And I accomplished this! i.e. I was able to keep myself from turning on my PS4 for the whole week. It's Saturday now and I'm looking forward to playing soon! Go me! I'm not hopelessly addicted! :)

-chronodekar
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
Amnesia: Memories

Because I can't seem to break away from the VNs for a while. Anyways, this one is interesting in that it splits off into four separate routes basically right at the very beginning, instead of making choices throughout the game. I did the Heart World first and got the good ending in a blind run.
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
Amnesia: Memories

I did the Spade World this time. Got a bad ending halfway through. Reloaded from my last save, got a normal ending. Reloaded with some more optimal choices, got the good ending with third time the charm.
 

chronodekar

Obsessively signs his posts
Staff member
Tales of Arise

I just finished the main story a few hours ago. There is still more post-story dungeons/quests/bosses to fight, but I'm not sure if I'll do those. Onto my impressions!

This was a fun game. I really, REALLY enjoyed the battle system. By and large, the game encourages you to fire up your special attacks and combos! I usually stuck with Alphen, the main character but it wasn't too hard to jump into most of the other characters. If you ask me who were the easiest to play, I will say it would be Alphen and Shionne. At least, they were the two I had the most fun with. Shionne comes with the caveat that she's the party healer (not counting Dohalim) - so if you use her, you'll need to keep an eye on the health of your squad.

To my surprise, I ended up finishing the fishing mini-game. You don't have to, but some of Kisara's skills are tied to the skill. It was a real annoyance to get started with, but as I got better fishing rods, the game became easier and, well, complete-able!

I liked the story. The game takes place in a world/planet called "Dahna" which is divided into 5 regions. Each of those regions has their own sub-plot where you meet different party members and end up recruiting them. I think you end up with the full party of 6 by the time you complete 3 regions. For the *most* part the larger story of the Renan tyranny over the Dahnans is done well. Where things kind-of fall flat is near the end. There are a few reveals near the end stages which are supposed to have a lot of impact. Well, I suppose they do, but I just didn't feel it.

At about 70% or 80% of the storyline, we get introduced to a "final villain/boss" who wants to destroy the world(s?). After playing so many RPGs, this is beginning to feel like the usual reason why the good guys fight the bad guys. There is some effort to try and show-case things from the baddie point-of-view, but ... I think it could have been done better. Then, right at the very end ... an annoyance pops up (am trying to avoid spoilers). This *could* have been done better, but for me ... it just didn't have the impact it should have had. Instead, I just found it annoying. Perhaps its because it felt like a scripted battle? I know I found it tedious.

I'm going to attribute those annoyances to the storyline. The battle-system in this game is top-notch and just plain fun!

Final conclusion: This is a game worth buying for the battle system and a story to carry it forward - the story stumbles at the end, but by then, chances are, you'll stick around for the battles. Graphics and sound are good/excellent! (on PS4)

-chronodekar
 
So, I've just started playing Guardians of the Galaxy.

All I can say is fucking awesome.

It's set up is really what Square-Enix/Crystal Dynamics should have done with Avengers, but didn't. While the roster for the team is MCU based, the characterization and backgrounds are closer to their comic book counterparts.

Gameplay is solid, characters are awesome and the story has been pretty cool so far. Right now, I'm headed to a fortress to sell Rocket to a Warrior Princess (long story). Needless to say, I'm really enjoying it so far.
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
Cookie Clicker

Bought the Steam version a few weeks ago and been idling and active playing bit by bit. Into the septendecillion range now with some save scumming.
 

Zetas

Lurking upon the deep
Messing around with this years dlc for Graveyard Keeper. It's honestly more of the same, just a little more story and a new way to make better corpses for zombies or your graveyard. Tbh i feel they threw this together in like the last few months, i mean sure the pandemic is still going on, but still it feels a little lack luster compared to the rest of the dlcs.
 

chronodekar

Obsessively signs his posts
Staff member
Inscryption
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1092790/Inscryption/

This game was suggested to me last week. It has a demo on steam which does a good job of showcasing what the core gameplay is about. I found the demo enjoyable, but it felt very grindy or rouge-like to me. The demo was fun. The core system is a card battler. You move from event to event collecting cards, fighting opponents and growing stronger. At the end of the demo, you fight a boss. The boss was very hard for me.

In the end, I walked away with the conclusion that this was a game I enjoy watching others play more than playing it myself. There are elements of escape-room, meta-puzzles with a dash of horror. All in all a good and wonderful combination. Just not the apple for an orange-lover like myself.

To my surprise (and shock!) there are full-walkthough videos of the entire game on youtube! That is FAST. The game hasn't been out for a week yet and folks have not only finished the game, but they've streamed it multiple times! To what I've seen, this is an amazing game which is worth full asking price of ~ CAD $25. Not my cup of tea, but if I knew someone who liked the genre, I might be happy to buy it as a gift.

-chronodekar
 
Finished Guardians of the Galaxy... Still fucking awesome.

To summarize the plot- You begin the game doing an illegal "get rich quick" scheme. You get caught and fined with a kree ship disabler installed on your ship. You spend the first half of the game looking to raise funds (thus the need to sell Rocket) and get caught up in events beyond your control. The latter half of the game is spent dealing with the BS events you really have no business being involved in given that you are a glorified mercenary band- even if you might have partially caused everything to begin with. The game, to me, was worth every penny.

Also, I impulse bought Control. How's that for irony. Anyways, I like this game. However it has a couple subtle tie-ins to other games made by the company (Alan Wake and Quantum Break)- implying that all of them take place in the same universe. In fact, Alan Wake may be responsible for the events of the game even happening. The game, while also being fun and interesting in it's own right, is actually making me want to play Alan Wake (which I've never had much interest in playing) and Quantum Break (which has been on my to buy/play list since it came out).
 

HotelKatz

Well-Known Member
Messing around with this years dlc for Graveyard Keeper. It's honestly more of the same, just a little more story and a new way to make better corpses for zombies or your graveyard. Tbh i feel they threw this together in like the last few months, i mean sure the pandemic is still going on, but still it feels a little lack luster compared to the rest of the dlcs.
I know what you mean. Not only that, but it feels unfinished. I expected there to be something done with the big stained glass window and the charged Sin shards, but nothing. At least nothing happened to me.

I also keep running into a glitch where if I put an organ into a body, the red skulls and the inserted organ doubles.
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
Cookie Clicker

Into the octodecillion range now. Mostly in the end-game outside of a few things that would take a few years of idling to get. I'm tinkering with the garden mini-game now, trying to get all the seeds planted. Once I do, I've deduced a path to a terrifying multiple that would easily push me into the vigintillion range from here, with 7 x 666 x ~95 x ~90 x 85 x 777 * 0.21 * 10 * 20 * 8 * 3

Which would be 6 Golden cookies (7x, 666x, and 3x of building multipliers between 85-95, then 777x per click), 21% of cookies per click, 10 seconds per click, 20 seconds, and then the 8x multiple from selling 800 buildings. Finally, the 3x boost from Sugar Frenzy.

It would require a full 6x6 garden of Golden Clovers on Clay to boost my golden cookie frequency by 135%. Save scumming to get a 7x, and two of the buildings. Then using Wizard Towers to get 3 more Golden Cookies (summon a golden cookie, sell enough Towers to be able to summon another golden cookie, buy more Towers, then use a Sugar Lump to refill my magic and summon another Golden Cookie). The effects of Golden Cookies summoned by the Wizard Tower are fixed, so it would be just going through spells until I get the set-up I want. Theoretically, I could get _4_ Cookies like this, but it would take a long, long time to get it set up well. After that, the game's basically over for me.
 

da_fox2279

California Crackpot
... There's a game called Cookie Clicker and it involves math?! Way to ruin cookies.:(
 
Been playing the Skyrim: Anniversary Edition. Not seeing much different graphically between the AE and the SE, but I am playing on X-Box One, so... I'm not sure what bugs- if any- were fixed either. Notablly, the Lars Battle-Born/Braith dialogue is still slightly bugged- but there's still the USSEP that already fixes that, so...

I do like how they better integrated the Creation Club content into the game. No more leaving Helgen with a shopping list of quests to do along with a small number of integration breaking starting items. I'm kinda hoping Fallout 4 gets the same overhaul treatment to be honest. While some of the creations aren't much to write home about in general- some of them do have interesting stories in their flavor text. Golden Hills Plantation has a pretty sad backstory. Bonechill Manor also has an interesting set-up. The integration of new spells, armor, robes, etc. allows for more variety of builds and even makes some builds- like a Necromancer Build- actually viable. I think it was worth it overall, but I'm not gonna argue with anyone who thinks Bethesda's latest Skyrim cashgrab was anything more than a transparent attempt at extorting more money from fans until ES6 comes out (which, admittedly, it kinda is).
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
Amnesia: Memories

Did the third route this time (Clover World). Got a normal ending, then went and did a good ending.

Since I've barely mentioned anything about the game itself...it's an otome game, with four different routes. What makes it differ a little is that instead of choosing to go out with, you choose a route at the beginning of the game with your romantic interest already predetermined by that route. And in fact, you and your romantic interest are already dating. Where the dating novel part comes in is that the heroine has plot-induced amnesia, so she has 30 days to try and get her memory back, while re-assessing her boyfriend and either trusting him or distrusting him based on her choices. Maximum trust gets the good ending, and failing to clear that bar gets a normal ending...or you could make a bad choice which leads to a bad end, which seems to almost always lead to death.

Something else that is kind of mild interest to me is that the backgrounds in this game are neat. Basically every background is a single colour, drawn in a sort of 'line-art' style. Sometimes, a background will change hues in a single scene to indicate the passage of time, where it might go from blue to yellow/orange to indicate it's late afternoon.
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
Amnesia: Memories

Got a bad end on the fourth route. Went and got a Normal Ending next, then the good ending. Then I used a guide to get all the remaining bad endings and Normal ending on the first four routes for dat Achievement completion.

Something I kind of wanted to mention in my previous post but forgot to. This game has sort of hinted on-and-off since the second route that the separate routes are, in fact, 'parallel worlds' with an overarching tie-in, and a character who is somehow able to see these different timelines. This got more obvious in the third and fourth routes. So that was kind of cool, to see that the late 2000s/early 2010s trend of SciFi-ish VNs that had 'separate dimensions' twists actually managed to even hit up an innocuous otome of all things. And yeah, after you clear the good endings for all four routes, a fifth route with the character who can see different timelines opens up. That wasn't surprising to me after all the hints that got dropped.
 
Tried playing GTA IV, it did not go very well. First I had to install the R* Game launcher, then I had to install Games for Windows Live, which refused to let me make an account, or sign in.

Fuck Rockstar...
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne HD Remaster

And after quite some time away, I got back into this game. I had apparently wiped at the Fourth Kalpa boss and forgot, but no matter. Some levelling up and more liberal usage of items, and the boss fell fairly quickly. Then I went and did the Fifth Kalpa as well. Getting into the Kalpa required some annoying backtracking , but once I was in the Fifth Kalpa, it was actually pleasantly quick to get through it. Finally got my Super Pixie, and then defeated the Fifth Kalpa boss, who I was never really threatened by.

I should be allowed to plant a sign though in the final boss room that says 'DEMI-FIEND WAS HERE. METATRON IS A LOSER!'

Now though, I'm going to spend some time on getting fusions caught up. At 62% now, but I want to complete as much as I can before I do a NG+, so I'm not having to try and do it all on a single path in the NG+, because I'll be splitting it 5 ways to get the 5 remaining endings there. I need 3 specific demons too, to get some goodies behind specific doors in the Fifth Kalpa as well.

I'll also try to get all my Magatama maxed out in this run, especially since I'm not sure if the Achievement for all Magatama maxed requires Pierce or not? If it does, I certainly cannot do that in a subsequent run without doing the Labyrinth again. Also, I've been picking away at what is imo the grindiest achievement, the one that requires me to get 100 items from demons. I've had a Parvati with Plead that I've been using here and there, but I'll have to buckle down and pick away at it. There's a few demons that should always give items/money to Parvati automatically, with Efreet being one of them, so I might just do that in one of the areas it appears.
 

da_fox2279

California Crackpot
Decided to fire up the 3ds and play Metroid Fusion for the first time. Fun game, really enjoying it. A worthy follow up to Super Metroid.

Playing it, however, has reminded me of the issues I had with playing SM: the fun of opening up and exploring new areas, going back and finding new stuff in previous areas...

The sheer frustration when you move into an area, save, and then discover that you can't move forward because you don't have the right items, and you can't backtrack because you can't jump high enough to reach the damn ledge...! And now I have to start a new game...
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
Cookie Clicker

Finally got all the achievements for cookie production specifically. At this point, it's mostly just idling, and waiting to get a lot of the time-based achievements, especially the ones that require lots of sugar lumps. Now to never play Cookie Clicker again.
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
Amnesia: Memories

Finished the last route. Cleared all the achievements, including one that was a real chore to get. I guess the game was fun-ish. Not too bad for an otome.
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne HD Remaster

I got into the Tower of Kagutsuchi. Cleared the first two out of three Reason bosses. I still have one more to go, since I am doing the True Demon route run this time.

I ditched that for the time being to go and work on the last sidequest in the game for me, which is grabbing all the Magatama. I got high enough in the Tower to grab the one sold in the Collector's shop, then I used my Kimen Stone that I've had for a while to go to the shrine south of Asakusa. Bishamonten wasn't much of a challenge, probably because I was at end-game levels, so I got another Magatama off of him. Then I was missing one more where I had to return to Shibuya to participate in a demon summoning at Full Kagutsuchi, which is definitely a guide dangit location.

With all those, I was able to get the Lord's Sword, and head to Bandou Shrine, where I fought Bishamonten again...and this time was actually a lot more difficult. I was never really in trouble of dying, but it was more my dumbass took too many turns just attacking him with attacks, before I even remembered to try for elemental weaknesses, or to shift in my Parvati for the Fire null. Koumokuten was a lot easier since I actually set my party up to try and null the remaining 3 elements going into that fight. Which is where I left off for today, since sleep beckons me right after writing this post.

In between all that, moving my Compendium along. It feels like a lot of times, after one or two fusions, suddenly half the remaining fusions all end in a Beidou Xingjun? That's annoying. I took to grabbing a fusion calculator to just optimise my way along from now. At 71%. I still need to get a Black Frost, Beelzebub, and Metatron set-up to grab the last few items in the Fifth Kalpa, too.
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
NEKOPARA Vol. 1

I played this game lmao

I had this game on my Steam library from who-knows-where (a Humble Bundle, maybe?), and decided to play it to trim my backlog down.

It was...surprisingly a little more wholesome than I expected. I mean, there's still lots of fan-service and lewd moments, but the overall character development was still relatively on track. Still wouldn't bother playing any more games in the series, though. It was short. Under 4 hours.
 

seitora

Well-Known Member
Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne HD Remaster

I went through and cleared out the rest of Bandou Shrine, and got myself the Masakados Magatama. I was able to max out all my Magatama thanks to abusing Grimoires, so now I have all Magatama and all Magatama completely levelled out.

89% completion rate on the compendium, too. I have every single demon that evolves from another demon now, except for Kurama Tengu. There's a lot of demon fusions are specific to a single Kagutsuchi phase, or require you to fuse for a specific demon on a Full Kagutsuchi phase and then sacrifice a third demon of a specific clan. Those are the ones that I definitely would have required a guide for.

At this point...damn, did the DLC come in handy. I needed it for both the amount of levelling I needed to do to get some demons to evolve, to max out all of Demi-Fiend's Magatamas, and to get the Macca required to complete the Compendium. I have my Uber Pixie at all 40 stats, so if I want to get other demons to all 40 stats, I'll be needing to summon a lot of Mitama, too.

In-between levelling up demons to evolve them, I also got the Trophy for getting 100 Gifts from demons. On that note, I dislike the text on that Trophy. I thought it was supposed to be getting 100 gifts from demons in battle, but it turns out it's getting 100 gifts from your own party when they level up. I probably wasted a couple of hours using Parvati with Plead to try and get items and Macca off of other demons :(

I probably won't bother with the Tombstone challenges to get my 5th Battle Press turn.
 
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