Lurker > dotsdfe

I had three in college with varying success.

The first was generally pretty chill, but he had a long-distance girlfriend and he'd get FURIOUS about her going out with friends or something. He'd get really red in the face and punch the wall while I was like two feet away just =|ing and pretending I couldn't hear despite the room being tiny as hell.

The second was I guess as much of an introvert as me, because we just said really basic hellos on the first day and then just kind of never spoke, ever. He was gone a lot anyway and eventually functionally moved out to live with his girlfriend and didn't show up for weeks at a time. It was a little weird, but I'm just really quiet and I sort of think he was too.

The third was honestly great. We got along super well, talked a lot, studied together at times, etc. Was a really good overall experience.

I've done a few Fire Emblem ironmans (basically no reset runs) in video form.

They were fun. It's definitely different not being able to reset to get your favorites back, but it forces you to really think moves through more.

I think the runs mostly went well, though I lost Robin on Awakening and thus technically lost the run. I beat my others, though they weren't especially tough games.

From what everyone is saying, it feels like my assessment isn't...wrong, per se, but people still generally like the game.

My initial thought based on these responses is to give it a bit more time and see how the story hooks me and if I can adjust to things a little bit. If it doesn't grab me after a bit (someone mentioned chapter 3 as a good point to determine that), I should probably just reluctantly drop it. I do want to at least give it a fair chance, because I liked the first game a lot, but yeah, if the gameplay just doesn't quite click with me by then, then I should probably just try something else, I think.

I really don't want to like...bash on something that a lot of people like, but I'm pretty early on in RDR2 and it's kind of not landing for me.

Everything just feels a little bit too...slow and clunky for me, I guess? It's little things like the really slow base walk speed, a lot of segments where you're just taking a while to travel somewhere on horse or carriage and listening to dialogue play out, and carriage driving in particular boiling down to just holding down a button for a few minutes at a time (which...I'll be honest, is a pet peeve of mine a bit, controllers are expensive as hell these days and those buttons do wear out eventually).

A small part of me is already just sort of wondering if the game is for me at all. I tried messing with the controls a bit (on the PS4 version, albeit being played on a PS5) and I couldn't find a setup that felt like it made things too much smoother, and a lot of what's bugging me feels a bit more ingrained into the gameplay, IE, the numerous riding segments already.

Does the game shift at all as it goes? I haven't gotten into the open world too much just yet (I basically just started into it, where I...immediately got into another mission that starts by forcing a carriage drive.), so I feel bad for having thoughts of dropping it as the actual game is just starting up, but if a lot of the missions are like what I mentioned, I think I'd have a bit of trouble sticking with it long term, and I believe the game is pretty long overall.

Sorry if this came across as overly harsh. I don't want to be like "Popular thing bad" at all, but I've had a bit of trouble getting into it thus far.

I kind of feel Ghost of Yotei is going to end up taking GotY overall. It feels like exactly the type of game that's meant to really appeal to reviewers/critics.

By the way, if anyone here was holding out for a physical copy, try Amazon. I've seen them restock a few times over the last week. Most of them sell out fast, but the current batch has been in stock for a few hours.

I only really know the Survivor/BB players, but they picked a solid lineup for those.

Wish that the Survivor Michele rumors had panned out though. She would have been a great pick.

They're fun to watch, but yeah, they'll get to you. I binged some of them a while back and I eventually had to stop because I started just getting really anxious when I was alone at night.

Fought Simon and honestly, it felt winnable, but I did lose after a bit. I think I'm going to call it on the game. I mostly just wanted to see it in-game/hear the music/take a crack at the fight, and I was always just kind of planning to call it after seeing both of the superbosses instead of worrying about optimizing my setups or anything for them.

Ultimately did everything except: I missed one lost gestral (it wasn't the Endless Tower one, and wherever that thing was hiding...kudos. I looked up and down so many times.), I didn't beat the last fight of Endless Tower, and I tried both superbosses but didn't give either a super serious effort. Otherwise I believe I did every single dungeon and beat...all or most of the field bosses, most of the tower, etc.

I'm around 70 hours in and starting to hit my burnout point, which happens with most games I play around that point, and I don't want to fully burn out, so feels like a good time to call it good for the game until I do NG+ later on really.

I already kinda gave my thoughts, but to reiterate, fucking phenomenal game, very strong contender for my favorite RPG ever (it's CO or Trails from Zero, I think), really did virtually everything right for me beyond some really small technical nitpicks. It absolutely earned all of the hype it got and I loved it to death.

A few of my friends got it and initially loved it, but have all since said that 24 players is just too chaotic and that it just isn't super fun for long.

Obviously very anecdotal, but it did strike me as interesting that I heard the same thing from a few different people around the same time.

Fuck, that's awful.

RIP to the victims.

I got to the end of the Endless Tower, and...phew. That final fight is a doozy.

That might go on my "I'm fine not finishing this" list. Honestly, I may get to Simon and take a crack at it just to see the fight in game and then call it.

At this point, I've done almost everything aside from Clea (likely skipping), the final fight of the Endless Tower (probably skipping), finding the last lost Gestral (wherever the hell that thing ended up, I have no idea, but good luck to the little thing, I feel like I've searched the map like five times over for it), and Renoir's Drafts/Simon (my plan is to just try Simon once without really intending to win). And honestly, I could probably do those by looking up the absolute optimal setups and whatever, but...ehhh.

Edit: Oh, and I have a handful of Mansion doors & Expedition Journals that I'm missing, probably from earlier dungeons that I didn't explore well enough at the time, but similarly don't feel the need to scour every single one again for the last few.

Game remains absolutely excellent, but I am definitely feeling that I'm nearing my burnout point. I usually get the itch to play other things when I've been on the same game for a while, and I think I'm approaching that, so kind of just trying to see all of the major content and then to call it good for the game, at least until I eventually decide to tackle NG+.

ssb_yunglink2 posted...

Clea isnt in the same league as Simon.

She is strong, but you should have all the tools you need to beat her by that point in the game even without Maelle nuking her. Check your pictos, lumina, and weapons. Every character can be doing much more than 70k by that point

Not to get overly defensive, but I feel like my setups are...decent enough, just not fully optimized. I haven't really had any issues with any bosses that I was at least close to the level of until this one.

Like I definitely feel like I could optimize things further, but I've been largely keeping on top of my setups and don't feel like I'm significantly behind. There may be some combos that I'm not really interacting with enough, though, as I tend to go a little bit vanilla with my stuff.

Are they buying into the whole "We're only going after the DANGEROUS ones! Just be an upstanding citizen and you'll be fine!" thing, or what?

Because that's...one of the most blatant lies I've ever seen. It's so aggressively clear that they're just going after whoever and then retroactively claiming that they were dangerous by exaggerating minor things or outright lying.

Genuinely wild statistic to see either way. I really don't know how things got this bad, and I don't know how you counteract this much propaganda when people are eating it so willingly.

Beaten this year:
Metaphor: ReFantazio
Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines
Bravely Default 2
Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE: Encore
Elden Ring
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

Currently playing:
Clair Obscur's postgame
The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy (in Switch handheld mode in bed for like 30-40 minutes a night, so going pretty slowly)

I'm a bit torn on what's next, I have several options, but I'm thinking either Red Dead Redemption 2, Persona 5 Strikers, or maybe Super Mario Wonder.

Kudos to what's her name for making her fifteen minutes of fame last for like five months.

Honestly she probably could have kept it going for another month or two if she didn't go maximum grift like that.

I'm really bad about just nodding/saying "Okay"/"Yeah" over and over during conversations.

I'm super introverted and tend to just let people bulldoze conversations a lot. I try to wait for a good opening to add something more meaningful and then the other person usually starts up again right as I start to say something else and I just let them continue.

Idk, sometimes I worry that it makes me look disinterested or bad at conversations, but I'm mostly just very softspoken in person and let others go first if we start talking at the same time, and most people just take that and run with it to keep going as I just nod or whatever.

I tried the Clea boss (in postgame, obviously), but I don't think I'm going to make a super serious go at it.

I know that people kind of set themselves up to nuke her, but I'm nowhere near set up to do it. I deal like 60-70k with attacks on average, with a few that situationally hit around 100k, and then I can get 1.5 mil with Sciel with a lot of setup. I'm nowhere close to being able to just nuke through her (does not help that I pretty much benched Maelle, who seems to be the go-to super nuke) and I'm definitely not good enough to parry enough to beat out the super healing.

Honestly, with postgame, I kind of told myself that I just wanted to get to and make an attempt at the two superbosses before calling it. I'm more interested in just seeing all of the content and giving it a halfhearted effort than actually beating them.

That's like the softest possible criticism, what the fuck.

Definitely seems like that's what he was implying. I'd distance myself if I were in that spot, honestly.

45 minutes after you start on your first day. They'll appreciate how bold you are.

Please do not do this.

Super fast zombies that are really threatening, strong characters, and an ability to balance fairly tonally different segments within the same movie without it feeling incongruent at all.

It's absolutely shocking how few standards Nintendo has for eShop games. There's so much pure slop out there including numerous games that are blatantly just AI shit from top to bottom.

I don't even especially care about hentai games being there either way, people can play what they want, but a lot of them are very blatantly extremely low-effort trash, if not outright AI generated themselves.

For a company that's as protective of their pristine image as Nintendo is, you'd think that they'd do more to regulate that stuff.

Tyranthraxus posted...

I get the impression Renoir can only paint the Gommage once a year so if you survive it, you're safe until next year at minimum.

You would be, yeah. You just can't totally dodge it forever strictly by having your birthday fall on a lucky day, you'd still be cooked the next year even if your age didn't fall on the newly-painted number.

DodogamaRayBrst posted...

Is there a lore answer to what happens to people who age up to the monolith number before the day of the gommage? Do they gommage midnight sharp, or do they get a reprieve till the Paintress awakens again?

My question as I began the game was what happens with people who turn X age the day after the Gommage. Like "I'm 32 today, 33 just got Gommage'd, but now I'm 33 right after so I'm safe, right?"

After beating the entire game/knowing the full story (major spoilers if you don't know the story), it was Renoir clearing out the oldest inhabitants of the painting each time, and the number/age thing was just a warning, so yeah, people who seemingly dodged a Gommage would just get wiped on the next one.

HighSeraph posted...

I only have base game but I thought about getting the dlcs I'm not sure yet

I very heavily recommend against the DLC, for what it's worth.

It's pretty rare that I feel explicitly ripped off by buying something video game-related, but...I felt it with that DLC. The Xenologue is super unfun to play, the new content is implemented pretty poorly, and it's kind of hard to avoid just breaking the game with it. I'm a huge FE fan, but I sincerely just hated the DLC and regretted buying it.

Overall yes, but it's honestly violently overrated as a whole and has a lot of pretty shaky parts of both its core strategic gameplay and the monastery loop.

Relm_Arrowny_87 posted...

I need to play FE3-6. I was on an FE kick for a little while and played through 1 and 2 but stopped early in 3.
If nothing else I need to play FE6 some day though.

For what it's worth...

3 holds up solidly well. It's sort of the forgotten FE since 12 exists, but it holds up really well on its own merits and I don't think it's as dated as 1/2.

Jugdral in general has some of the series' best storytelling. 4 has kind of earned its reputation as this behemoth of a game with maps that are arguably too big for their own good, but if you don't mind that, or just break them up into chunks and play a bit at a time, it's a cool and super unique game. Admittedly I appreciate it more than I enjoy playing it, but it's worth a run for FE fans.

Thracia is the black sheep of the series that a lot of people won't touch, but I think a lot of its silly stuff is overhyped. I think it's super on point in terms of storytelling and has a lot of really fun/silly elements to the gameplay. It's a weird game, but it's great.

Binding Blade is a lot more in line with modern FEs and feels like FE7 but a bit less polished. It's not balanced very well, but it's fun to make the silly low tier heroes work. Dorothy for life.

If nothing else, I wish that they'd translate it and release it on eShop.

Game holds up very well. I know it isn't perfect and could use some touching up (namely with the hitrates & general unit balance), but it's not so far behind FE7 in terms of modernization that it would wreck that many players or anything.

But I would also very much take a remake/remaster.

I've beaten the game a lot over the years, and I've replayed it a few times in the past few years for video footage since I keep making videos on FE6 characters in particular, and I have a blast with it every time. I can always just kick back and do a chill run of that game and have a blast with it.

It definitely felt like alpha footage that they tossed out there just because it keeps getting leaked so much. Like a "Okay, P4R is real, stop leaking this and let us work on the damn thing."

Very odd as an announcement, but P4 rules, so I trust them to make it great.

What didn't you like about Engage?

Generally the fan perception is that TH has the better story/characters/worldbuilding, but is lacking in the gameplay department with kind of dry maps, some repetition, and wonky balance relative to how open it is which leads to a lot of things becoming same-y if you just go for breaking the game with the best classes.

Engage is generally seen as having stronger gameplay, with some calling it some the best in the series, while the writing is pretty universally loathed.

I'm personally a bit more in the middle. I think TH's gameplay is rough but not as boring as people say, and I think that Engage's is a little overrated, with a lot of the super-powerful rings starting to feel a little same-y by the time you get far enough in or do multiple runs. I've beaten Engage twice and I felt like my character choices didn't matter a ton since even using different characters felt fairly similar with how much power is in the rings. I also think that the game's lategame just sucks on Maddening, it spams infinite reinforcements really hard and feels like you either abuse things to skip maps or have a terrible time as you just get slogged down in enemies.

Ultimately I think it comes down to what you didn't like about Engage/why you didn't finish it. If the gameplay wasn't clicking for you, I wouldn't bother trying it again because I feel like it gets a bit worse as it goes. If it's just the story, well, everyone hates that.

Faces for Leopards founder shocked by leopard's actions regarding faces.

How about this, Maher & Elon can start their own political party centered around sniffing their own farts, and leave everyone else out of it.

I'm kind of sick of both of them honestly.

AceMos posted...

its scary how quickly people are letting AI just do every bit of thinking for them

It sincerely horrified me that just yesterday, there were people here raising concerns about AI, and a few people shut that down and called those people behind the times and living under a rock.

Like the technology is still pretty new and there's a ton of room for inaccuracies, even ignoring the completely dystopian aspect of letting a machine think for you in the first place. It's absolutely absurd to me.

Genuinely a good contender for my favorite movie ever. It's so damn funny.

Mouthwashing is really good and kind of falls into this category, I think.

Tyranthraxus posted...

IMO the better ending is Alicia leaves voluntarily. Renoir doesn't destroy the canvas. And the whole family goes and gets some fucking therapy or some shit.

The thing about that is that as long as the painting existed in any form, Aline was almost certainly going to keep trying to get back in there to hang onto that piece of her son, and Alicia would probably be trying to jump back in to live her other life. Renoir said that staying in there warps you, and it seems like those two were definitely at that point.

The family, or at least Aline & Alicia, were totally obsessed with the painting for different reasons. While I wish that there was a "Just hide the painting and let the residents live" ending, I don't think that Renoir was ever going to let it happen because his wife and daughter probably would have kept trying to find it over and over until it was destroyed. It just wasn't worth keeping around to him.

May as well take a crack at it.

Good luck, everyone.

Xerun posted...

yell at him or attack anyway. But mostly I just wanted something more for Lune and Sciel to have some agency in the choice of their world ending.

I think there's something to be said for how selfish Verso & honestly Maelle both were in that moment.

Like Verso is obvious, and even though I empathize with him in being forced to basically live in perpetual impostor syndrome for decades as the shadow of someone else, he still used the party pretty hard and didn't give a shit about killing the others in the end.

But even Maelle/Alicia frames it all through things like "Don't leave ME alone" and "Don't make ME go back out there to my other body." She never stops and says "Hey, Lune and Sciel are here too, what do they think?" At that moment, she was basically just a god playing with her toys and worried about how the choice would impact her without truly caring about the others.

I feel like it highlights that aspect of their characters, especially when you have Lune's death glare in her final moments. Or at least, that's what I took from it. It's possible that the devs were just more focused on Verso/Maelle as what's essentially the main characters of the game and didn't care as much about the other two, but idk, I think there's something to be said for that moment and how both characters made it about themselves when the other two had their lives very much on the line there too.

Also, I don't know that it even sold out. My friend texted me that his store still had it late yesterday and I've heard of several people being able to just walk into a store and get one.

Gonna be honest, they carried that conference. There were a few decent announcements otherwise, but the vast majority of the rest of it was kind of junk.

I have to say, even a bit after beating it, I'm continuously impressed by this game.

Doing optional stuff that either opened up in Act 3 or was too highly-leveled to do earlier like Frozen Hearts & The Reacher. These are super in-depth dungeons that a lot of players won't even see if they just solely did the main story/didn't focus on post-game. The Reacher even had multiple songs for the same dungeon.

Like I've seen so many RPGs that cut corners and reuse the same dungeon songs, and here's CO creating these super intricate and elaborate songs for random side content that's super easy to miss. I'm still blown away by just how much passion went into the game.

I know a few people who just rushed the main story and stopped and I sort of feel bad for people who did. You miss a lot of super cool stuff if you ignore the side content.

darkknight109 posted...

I just found it to be a bad game in general.

Apollo really didn't carry the story as well as Phoenix, I hated what they did with the *actual* Phoenix (turning him from a mildly-neurotic straight man into this weird stoner-mentor that was the complete opposite of his original characterization), all of the interesting recurring characters from the original trilogy (Maya, Pearl, Edgeworth, Gumshoe, etc.) were removed and replaced with far less interesting substitutes, the cases were all uninteresting, the arc villain's motivations are absolutely batshit bonkers, and the prosecutor is terrible as a villain because he's on your side half the time, meaning there's no satisfaction in wiping the floor with him and rubbing his face in it the way you got to with Edgeworth/Von Karma (either of them)/Coffee Fiend.

It was just a train wreck of a game.

In addition to that...

I felt like Phoenix learned to stand on his own and have confidence in himself by like, 1-2 or 1-3, and Apollo ended the game like "Well, I still need my mentor and everyone around me to step in, but maybe I'll get there some day." It felt like it took a full game to get where Phoenix was by maybe mid/late 1-2 and made him feel very weak as a character.

Aside from 4-1 (which is really good), the cases are just a bit underwhelming. 4-2 is serviceable filler but nothing super special, 4-3 is overly obvious and just pretty bland, and IMO 4-4 suffers from literally showing the killer in the intro cutscene & having its final trial day basically boil down to using the bracelet and taking the actual evidence stuff out of the picture.

I respect the game trying to shift the tone and take a really bold step for the series, but I ultimately don't love the game. I think it missed the mark in several areas.

I always see people say that AA (or VNs in general) isn't very replayable because you know the killers, but people forget just how many details you kind of get fuzzy on over time. The games are also still just a really fun ride with some excellent characters and a lot of big dramatic twists that are entertaining to re-experience.

I've gone through the series tons of times and I always enjoy it.

No, and anyone who does is a damn fool.

Nobody flips that hard that fast on their entire belief system. The absolute best case scenario would be that he's just the biggest idiot ever born who totally changes his belief system every few years for virtually no reason.

But the truth of the matter is that he's an opportunistic worm who's willing to step on any groups that he wants as long as it profits him, and that he'll chuck that out afterward even when it's a terrible idea because he's also pretty impulsive and stupid. He will absolutely crawl right back into the GOP's colon if he thinks it benefits him to do it.

I never trusted him and I never will.

Kisai posted...

Why can't we just have a Marvel fighting game? Why does it have to be MvC?

Ironically, I'm kind of the opposite, I really want another swing at a Capcom All-Stars type fighting game.

Give me more shots at Ace Attorney characters in a FG. I'll forever be happy that I got Phoenix Wright in UMvC3, but it'd be rad to get more.

MC_BatCommander posted...

Probably for the best right, people hated that last one

That one is on Marvel.

Allegedly they gave Capcom a bunch of silly demands and a big time crunch to make the game and it just ended up as a wreck. Sort of sucks if it killed the series.

It's impressive how even after I beat the game, it can still find ways to stab me in the heart and twist the knife.

I hadn't unlocked Sciel's last camp event before finishing the game. Learning that she met Esquie because she was trying to kill herself and he rescued her, and that she subsequently miscarried after the attempt, was pretty brutal and recontextualizes a fair bit of her character.

I've heard it's like...very very loosely "Okay" but not much else. It's apparently a watchable adaptation but not much more than that.

I've heard that it had a decent anime-only filler episode/case at least.

Ace Attorney.

And before you say "Nooo, it's not dead, it gets stuff all the time!", it hasn't had a new game developed since 2017. Its last mainline entry was 2016. It's rapidly coming up on a decade since it got anything that wasn't a port or a remaster. Shu Takumi is done with it and the person who led the series for 5/6 left Capcom a while ago. It's not as dead as several other series, but it's not particularly alive.