What Are You Currently Playing? 6.65: Neighbor of the Beast

[Mustang]

Haven't been able to play anything for the past couple of weeks due to work, but I did buy the season pass to Nioh, and I just found out that the last DLC will have Ryu Hayabusa as a boss. I'm hyped up for that.

Other than that, I've been watching footage of DBFZ and MvCI. High level play in DBFz is too good. Still a little worried since these characters are still relatively the same, but I think it's probably because most people are playing them that way. In a sense, I wish this was a 1v1 game instead of 3v3, but other than that it looks too good.

MvCI on the other hand, despite the ugliness and the roster, this game is winning me over. Capcom, yet again was aiming for casuals but the way the game plays, it might turn out much like MvC3 in terms of the complexity, it might be too much for casuals. Next to Tekken and Guilty Gear, this might be the deepest fighting game to date. Spider-man looks too fun.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I'm not going to lie, while I think that the base campaign for Nioh is really solid stuff, the DLC kind of fucked things up for me in the long-run. I'm not talking about the new missions or enemies themselves. Those are fine. I'm talking about how Team Ninja made the poor decision to tweak the gameplay balance in order to put more emphasis on scaling up your gear, thus forcing players to grind for better weapons and armor in order to take on tougher mission levels in the new regions added by the DLC. If you refuse to do this, then have fun doing shit damage to regular enemies and practically none to bosses, all while they can wipe you out in just one hit. The funny thing is that I can deal with the latter since my time playing character action games on harder difficulty settings has made me adept at not getting hit most of the time, which is why I hardly put time into upgrading my armor. But I absolutely detest enemies and bosses that can tank your most powerful attacks like it's nothing, forcing you to slog trough fighting them all while you have to play absolutely perfect the whole time. The main game never had this issue for me, but unfortunately Team Ninja decided to over-emphasize the RPG aspects of this game with the new content, when the balance that they had with the emphasis on character action game-style skill is what made Nioh such a uniquely fun experience in the first place, IMO.

[Foggle]

I finally finished playing through all the Wolfenstein games. Overall, I think The Old Blood might actually be my favorite - the last third is fairly weak (especially that final boss, ew) but it's one of the most satisfying shooters I've ever played. The New Order is right behind it, though on my second playthrough I did notice it having a few tedious/poorly-balanced parts that made me want to take breaks from it sometimes; still an awesome game overall, though. Can't wait for the next one!

Now I'm replaying the original Deus Ex for the fifth time. I'm always finding new stuff in this game... it never fails to impress me!

[gunswordfist]

I beat Double Dragon Neon finally and have been playing Hard mode. We all agree that the tank level is the worst level, right?

[Spark Of Spirit]

I played a bunch of New Order. It's alright. I just really wish we could ditch iron sights already. They slow the action down and every game uses them the exact same way. Also, I wish it was easier to stealth. But it's a fun game overall.

I beat Double Dragon Neon finally and have been playing Hard mode. We all agree that the tank level is the worst level, right?

The surfing level is more annoying. Too many instant deaths.

[Foggle]

I played a bunch of New Order. It's alright. I just really wish we could ditch iron sights already. They slow the action down and every game uses them the exact same way.

I never use iron sights! I'm always dual-wielding. Makes the game way more fun.

[Spark Of Spirit]

I played a bunch of New Order. It's alright. I just really wish we could ditch iron sights already. They slow the action down and every game uses them the exact same way.

I never use iron sights! I'm always dual-wielding. Makes the game way more fun.

More ammo drops is all I ask.

[gunswordfist]

I beat Double Dragon Neon finally and have been playing Hard mode. We all agree that the tank level is the worst level, right?

The surfing level is more annoying. Too many instant deaths.
[/quote]I forgot about that level..I took a long break on that game. lol

[Foggle]

More ammo drops is all I ask.

Yeah, definitely. They should also make it so you can pick up the ammo by simply walking over it like in every other game ever...

[Nel_Annette]

Beat Ys 8 about a week ago. It kind of shit the bed towards the end.

Gameplay wise, the closer you get to the end of the final dungeon, the more side-stuff it starts throwing at you. Suppressions, interceptions, villager sidequests, and one final, extra flashback for Dana. I can *see* the boss of the area in the distance and that stupid parrot keeps calling me back to the village. Not to mention two or three key items were in the final dungeon. I did all the villager sidequests and still didn't have maximum affinity with everyone in the village, so I'm guessing there's a few gift items locked behind the last few suppressions and interceptions, which I didn't have the patience to complete.

Story-wise, hoo boy...

Spoiler

This plot was great and intriguing until it started doing that Tales of thing where we basically have to kill a god and save the world. I was fine with it being an island escape story. I thought the big threat in the past was also going to be Okeanos, to link the creature as the big bad of both plots. But you finally kill him and the plot derails into this Evolution/Genocide Tree thing that just absolutely loses me. (The cast even looks like a Tales Of party once you have all six of them together). This series already had a great mythos with the Eldeen and now we're just piling all these previous civilizations and gods on top of it? Was Maia and the other two gods mentioned previously? I forget. Did the Eldeen come after Dana's people had died out? That was a bit confusing to me. I thought it would have been cool if Ura/Sarai had turned out to be an Eldeen and that it was going to be revealed that they were the last victims of the Lacrimosa, but she just seems to be from a race of shapeshifter aliens.

I was expecting a bigger reveal for that red-haired chick from Dana's past sections, considering she appears on the Japanese box art with the party. I was expecting her to be the big bad, honestly.

[close]

Still an enjoyable game, I just really didn't like the last few hours. There was a post-game dungeon, but the reward at the end of it just seemed like something that should have been a standard new game + option, rather than something you had to go through the hardest dungeon in the game for.

[Spark Of Spirit]

I haven't been all that into Ys stories after the first three games when the original creators left (to form Quintet, natch) for the reason that they became pretty generic, especially after IV. The first few games have a lot of mystique and mystery to the world and lore, and later games just kind of dump it all on to you in order to save the world against something that comes out of nowhere. And it always involves the land's ancient god or whatever instead of keeping it related to the story you've been involved in since the beginning of the game.

I'm glad the game is otherwise great. The combat and exploration is always top notch in Ys, and that's really what I come for. I just wish we could have a story as engaging as the early games were again.

[Nel_Annette]

Story was never the most important thing in Ys, but it was jarring in this game to just see it go the usual JRPG route and have you kill a god to save the world. Not even a region, this time, but the entire planet. On this tiny deserted island in the middle of the sea (I assume it's the same Mediterranean Sea stand-in that the Canaan Islands are in).

The other subplots are really fun. Murder mysteries, ghost ships, finding the missing castaways, the dinosaur stuff (localization keeps calling them Ancient Species; it's stupid), exploring Dana's past and trying to find out how her ancient civilization died out, it's all great. It's why I wish the ending had stuck with that deserted mysterious island theme.

Speaking of the localization, it seems NIS got a lot of complaints and is going to update it.

[Foggle]

Got The Evil Within 2. It's a lot better than I expected but almost completely different from the first one. There are many superficial similarities but despite being basically the same on paper its mechanics function much differently from the original. At first this threw me off as well as frustrated and disappointed me but the more I play it the more I love it. Like the first game, this one doesn't really put its best foot forward (in fact it seriously doubles down on the early cinematic walking simulator stuff) but it gets super good once you hit chapter 3. The "open world" is more like a bunch of small but dense hubs and they're a lot of fun to explore. Certain gameplay elements are locked behind the upgrade system early on which sucks, and I wish they hadn't got rid of matches or toned down the trap placement, but this is way more of an actual survival horror game now. While TEW was basically Resident Evil 4 Part 2, this one carves out its own little niche and feels like something entirely new and unique. It's also hard as hell on the recommended difficulty setting (Nightmare). Recommended!

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I still need to play the first TEW before I can get to this one, but I really do want to get to it. I had planned to play through the RE Origins Collection thus month but it doesn't look like that will be happening after all. The final Nioh DLC took me longer to complete than expected, and I still have both Metro games to play through in addition to getting back into Bloodborne.

By the time I get done with those it'll probably be next year. My gaming progress is pretty slow these days due to my divided attention with work, life in general, and other forms of entertainment. But I do still really want to play TEW and the sequel.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Finally played Cuphead and beat the first world. Excellent game and well worth the acclaim. Just wish I didn't have to play it with a crap d-pad.