Recently finished off Wasteland 2. It's a bit rough around the edges, and you'll probably want to read a character creation guide if you intend to play above the lowest difficulty setting, but it's a damn fine game.
It's one of those RPGs where I got the feeling that my choices A: were my own, i.e. I had a generous degree of autonomy, and B: my decisions had genuine impacts on the game world.
For example, while exploring a restricted area in one seemingly-civilized major post-apocalyptic town, I discovered the inhabitants were secretly cannibals. Equipped with this information, I chose to fight when the local civil authorities tried to detain one of my characters in order to compel me to complete a quest chain for them. Things quickly spiraled out of control, and I ended up completely wiping out their security forces and storming their headquarters to murder their leaders. Later, when exploring the world map, I was attacked in random encounters by former residents of the now-ruined city who had degenerated into open savagery. The summation that accompanied the ending of the game described how, absent a defense force and government, the city was raided by slavers, abandoned, and is now believed to be haunted by the ghosts of the several dozen people I slaughtered. I grinned as I read it.
Currently playing Jedi Academy. Got it for a buck from the Humble Bundle. Like Jedi Outcast before it, turning on realistic saber combat turns it into the best sword-based third-person game ever. There's nothing quite like doing a running, slashing somersault over a Sith and having their headless, handless corpse slowly slump over behind you.
Got a character creation guide you'd recommend? A friend gifted it to me but I stared at the character creation for half an hour then gave up. Reminded me of trying to play Baldur's Gate...
Playing DreamQuest for iOS. It's a roguelike deckbuilder: combats are resolved by playing your deck against a monster's deck, and most of the stuff you acquire during the game is cards to add to your deck. (Note: you don't add cards during fights, only between fights.) While you're not in combat you walk around a grid of passable/impassable terrain that contains the monsters you can fight (passive until you engage them), shops, and a few other things. There's a good amount of variety in the different types of enemies you face, the different classes you can play (which have different special abilities and starting decks and types of cards that spawn for them), and the kinds of decks you can end up with. Each run is permadeath, but achievements you get unlock new things for future runs. The art style is consciously low budget - not retro, rather just not involving a real artist. I recommend it. I'd pay $25 for it, and it costs only $3. Unfortunately, it's only available on iOS.
(February 10th, 2015, 17:57)NobleHelium Wrote: Got a character creation guide you'd recommend? A friend gifted it to me but I stared at the character creation for half an hour then gave up. Reminded me of trying to play Baldur's Gate...
Something Awful's "Video Game Article" is a (really funny) comedy column, but the advice in that particular one is genuine and spoiler-free. GameFAQs-type guides tend to include spoilers and/or go too far and strip away all strategy from the player.
Here are some pointers from my personal experience, in spoilers both for length and in case you feel the article is sufficient and you want to figure out everything past the bare essentials for yourself.
Attribute Points:
* As the guide I linked to above notes, you really don't want under 12 initiative on anyone. 13 will let you go before most enemies. Manually attacking enemies before they can see you so that you initiate combat seems to give you a large one-turn initiative boost, although I'm not sure how the actual mechanics behind it operate.
* The guide is incorrect when it says that Charisma is averaged between your party- it's actually added. You will want at least 12 Charisma total in order to broaden your recruiting options, but that's really easy to achieve given that you can have up to 7 characters and most of the ones you hire will have a few points already invested. Make sure you only give Leadership skill points to whatever permanent party member has the most Charisma (in my case this was one of my starting Rangers with 3).
* You will get a bonus attribute point every 10 levels; the game has a level cap of 50, and you'll probably complete the game somewhere in the high 40's.
* Never have an odd number of points invested in Intelligence, only even numbers provide any benefit. Don't go under 4 intelligence on your starting Rangers unless you want them to be almost useless at all but one or two skills (and there are a lot of skills).
* Action points are important, but you can only store a couple leftover points every combat turn. Characters who will be moving and shooting a lot need more action points; snipers and riflemen who will mostly be firing from a stationary position don't need much more than 8.
* The Luck stat is completely useless.
Skills:
* Toaster Repair sounds like a joke, but it's necessary to complete quests that lead to some of the best weapons in the game.
* Energy Weapons are useless for most of the first half of the game, but are top-tier against most (but not all) late-game foes.
* Animal Whispering is mostly useless. You need it at like level 7 to complete a minor quest in the end game. Great.
* Outdoorsman is very useful early on to avoid constantly having to deal with random encounters. These start to become much less frequent by the second act.
* Barter is useless.
* Weaponsmithing is very useful, especially early on, but you won't ever need to max it. It also gives a lot of exp points to whoever has it, as long as you don't mind using up guns for lower-valued parts rather than selling them intact.
* All of the dialogue skills are useful, Hard Ass somewhat less than the other two. Don't worry about losing exp by taking peaceful solutions, you can usually just turn around and murder everyone anyway later.
* Plan to eventually max out Perception, Demolitions, Safecracking, Computer Science, Lockpicking, Brute Force and Mechanical Repair.
* Alarm disarming isn't very useful if you plan on fighting everyone who's hostile anyway.
Gameplay:
* I don't want to say too much here for fear of spoilers, but be aware that you'll have to make a choice early on whether to save Highpool or the Ag Center. The Ag Center is much more difficult and much longer than Highpool; I enjoyed it, but I had to reload many times.
(February 9th, 2015, 14:41)Bobchillingworth Wrote: Currently playing Jedi Academy. Got it for a buck from the Humble Bundle. Like Jedi Outcast before it, turning on realistic saber combat turns it into the best sword-based third-person game ever. There's nothing quite like doing a running, slashing somersault over a Sith and having their headless, handless corpse slowly slump over behind you.
And the mid bundle update today just added Outcast to the BTA tier, and I thought Outcast was a lot better than Academy personally. Since my old copy is lost to time, it's making me seriously considering splurging on the whole bundle now....
I'm playing Massive Chalice which is a lot like a medieval fantasy XCom. It's really fun. I backed it on kickstarter so I got in early. It's technically not finished yet, but its available on steam early access. They are very close to a finished version and honestly it feels pretty complete. Not many bugs, (I've only encountered 1). I've played one full play through and I immediately started again when I was finished.
“The wind went mute and the trees in the forest stood still. It was time for the last tale.”
Just started Don't Starve since I've had it in my steam library for a while with the intention of playing it with friends when the multiplayer is released.
Everything seemed to be going fine (with the exception of me finding 0 gold veins) but when it turned into winter and my farms stopped producing food and I only had the rabbit earmuffs so I couldn't leave a heat source for more than a minute at a time. Eventually ran out of food on day 27 but I unlocked 2 new characters so hopefully next time I can prioritize some warm clothing. Also I'm not sure how strong the creatures are in this game, I had 2 dogs attack me on days 11 and 22 (or thereabouts) and they were easy to deal with but when I went after a spider nest around 5-6 of them immediately attacked me, seemed similar with the buffalo type animals since they gang up on your quickly.
"We are open to all opinions as long as they are the same as ours."
I'm taking a look at "Grow Home", a 3rd person exploration jump'n run about a robot that needs to grow a giant plant.
It supposedly started as a tech demo but according to Ubisoft many people in their office liked it so it was turned into a game.
(February 11th, 2015, 22:38)Lewwyn Wrote: I'm playing Massive Chalice which is a lot like a medieval fantasy XCom. It's really fun. I backed it on kickstarter so I got in early. It's technically not finished yet, but its available on steam early access. They are very close to a finished version and honestly it feels pretty complete. Not many bugs, (I've only encountered 1). I've played one full play through and I immediately started again when I was finished.
I'm a backer and I've played a bit, but the combat just feels unsatisfying without a cover system. I do like the strategy layer but the combat is the bulk of the game. Also, I don't like the fact that high level heroes need to die in combat to drop an artifact.
Admittedly, I haven't played it recently so it could be considerably better now. What do you think?
(February 11th, 2015, 22:38)Lewwyn Wrote: I'm playing Massive Chalice which is a lot like a medieval fantasy XCom. It's really fun. I backed it on kickstarter so I got in early. It's technically not finished yet, but its available on steam early access. They are very close to a finished version and honestly it feels pretty complete. Not many bugs, (I've only encountered 1). I've played one full play through and I immediately started again when I was finished.
I'm a backer and I've played a bit, but the combat just feels unsatisfying without a cover system. I do like the strategy layer but the combat is the bulk of the game. Also, I don't like the fact that high level heroes need to die in combat to drop an artifact.
Admittedly, I haven't played it recently so it could be considerably better now. What do you think?
High level heros drop artifacts when they die outside of combat now and even when you put them in the sagewright guild they give up their weapon which can turn into a relic.
I am also slightly frustrated by no overwatch type stuff. Cover is okay since if you're behind something, enemies literally can't see you and thus attack you or even move towards you.
“The wind went mute and the trees in the forest stood still. It was time for the last tale.”
