Ultimate Videogame Topic 3: The Next Generation

[Andrius]

So I bought Darkest Dungeon after finding its old Kickstarter page completely by accident. Watched about an hour of a lets play on youtube and was like 'okay this looks fun with a sanity system for added hilarity'.

It is both hilarious and brilliant design.
Also I just lost half my 'B Team' in a ill-planned boss battle. The 'A Team' was out of commission, having barely survived a similar venture.

I'm loving the game so far, as its a good rogue-like dungeon-crawler with the stress system for dismal deaths to CLUTCH STALWART VICTORIES. Minus burying half my backup team.

[Andrius]

Hooray for bullshit politics!

On a game-based note, I've finally softmodded the Wii that was left in my house, and bought a hard drive to go with it. What games should I get for it? I have Twilight Princess/Smash Bros Brawl already.

The Last Story if you don't have tons of time.
Xenoblade Chronicles if you have a ton of time and like playing out a game to the fullest.

I love the latter. The former is great, though I found it too short and there were some parts that were just too annoying for me to like (the bloody spider boss). Still, it had great music and great characters. Just wish it were a bit broader in scope and, personally, allowed you to control other party members. >_>

[Andrius]

I almost bought a Wii just for Xenoblade.

I bought a Nintendo 3DS just for Fire Emblem Awakening. Put more hours into that game than dollars I spent for it. >______>

I have... inherited a WiiU so I'm all set for Xenoblade X.
Cannot express my excitement in words.
Though it will also be an incredibly sad moment for me.

[Andrius]

Andrius is about to play Team Fortress 2 for the first time.
Should be a good experience.

[Andrius]

You know, it wasn't bad. It felt a lot like Counter Strike where sometimes you don't know how you died/what's going on.
I mean, it was fun. Basically played the medic and wished I had a better weapon than the needle-gun but it was fun.

Won't play regularly by any means but it was fun for a night.

[Andrius]

You know, despite being a Fire Emblem fan I'm not terribly excited for SMTxFE. Namely because it seems more like they're throwing in parts of Fire Emblem for the sake of calling it a Fire Emblem crossover. *shrug*

Fire Emblem If looks great but not sure if I'll buy.

MEANWHILE Xenoblade Chronices X is pretty much an insta-buy. <3 Anyone else planning on getting it?

[Andrius]

We Need to go Deeper, on Steam, looks amazing.
Please tell me its not like $20 because I want to play this with amazing people.

[Andrius]

We Need to go Deeper, on Steam, looks amazing.
Please tell me its not like $20 because I want to play this with amazing people.

omg thiiiis looks awesome

Its only $8 right now.
I could be down to play this and die terribly together.

[Andrius]

Did anyone actually get the Breath of the Wild?
I saw some gameplay yesterday and was fairly surprised about how it looked, especially a lot of RPG elements that LoZ hasn't had (the weapon collection/usage/breaking, cooking food etc).

[Andrius]

The amount of detail and just different open world things that you can do is pretty awesome.

This is probably the biggest draw for me, given they're generally fairly predictable games story-wise.
I'm assuming that the Old Man you meet in the first five minutes turns out to be KING HYRULE or something like that but that's just idle speculation.

The controls are clunky as all hell and you are having to swap between equipment too much for my tastes.

The hour of the let's play I watched conveyed both of these issues as well.

I think it's the weakest story line I've seen so far but aesthetically its the best.

Yeah, I think, if I play it, it'll have to be a focus on EXPLORING and stuff because I had the same issue with XENOBLADE where the first one had a far superior story but I liked the second one's exploration and quest lines better, but once I approached the second with a focus on exploration and not 'this is going to be as amazing a story as the first one' I was fine.
Kind of sad to know that the story isn't that great though. Zelda games were always pretty good at that.

[Andrius]

I watched some streams of the new Zelda game and it was just so unZeldalike. I felt like I was watching someone play an Oblivion mod.

I dunno, maybe it's gr8 fun but ughhhhhh the feel was so wrong.

It feels exactly like a Zelda game to me. It reminds me so much of Wind Waker, the feeling of exploration, the feeling of seeing something cool on the horizon and going to it, the feeling of finding something cool around the corner.

I told my friend that this is Wind Waker 2 if sailing was actually fun.

Glad you said this. If I end up getting this game it would be for the exploration and not for the story aspect.
Wouldn't be the first time I bought a Nintendo system for one game.

Also Yukari is still best girl, Hiraki.

[Andrius]

I love the Xenoblade series.

Spoiler: The Ending

I'm guessing you mean regarding The Lifehold being de-powered and thus 'why are we all still alive'?

They don't answer that, no, and even Elma is surprised. I'm *guessing* its the planet itself, given that their ability to understand foreign languages likely comes from Mira itself as is postulated in Chapter 5. We also know that Mira, itself, actively prevents people from LEAVING (The Ganglion cannot escape) and at the same time draws people to it (Humans, Manon, Ganglion, among other; IIRC the Nopon and L are the only locals).

If you've played the original Xenoblade Chronicles, my guess is that this has something to do with The Monado and/or Alvis.
But we don't have an official answer and/or likely wont unless they make a sequel or tie in some/all of their games together.

Oh and regarding Lao, there's some speculation that he was brought back as a *human* and not a Mim based on his eyes when he awoke (given Mims have that circle effect in their eyes, but its been a long time since I've read into that.

[Andrius]

For those of you who were just starting Xenoblade 2 a few weeks ago, did it get any better as time went on?
Your thoughts are appreciated.

[Andrius]

My biggest problem with Into the Breach is that it combines "You're screwed, and there's nothing you can do about it" with "It's actually demonstrable your fault that you're screwed." Like, I keep getting into scenarios where I can't stop the Vek from destroying something, and then realizing that if I'd done something different last turn, I'd be better positioned now. It's also really addicting, though, since it's clear what's happening and why, and solving a turn feels awesome.

yeah. it pisses me off when i drop into a scenario and on the first turn the vek lock down a bomb or something and i have literally no way to deal w/ it

I think the key is realizing you *have* to let certain things die in the game. You can get power back, you can't get objectives/pilots back nearly as easily.

The difficulty spike is real though - I'm two achievements shy of perfect, one of which being HARD MODE which is harder just by means of throwing more vek at you per turn.

[Andrius]

I think the key is realizing you *have* to let certain things die in the game. You can get power back, you can't get objectives/pilots back nearly as easily.

certain squads scale much better ive found

for instance the area denial nature of husting hulks will works the same / even better when you scale the number of the vek up because there is a limit to the number of good squares they can act from and you often get vek standing around unable to reach a good square or force them shoot at mecs which you can just move

Steel Judoka is by far the most misunderstood group simply because they rely on others to do damage for them.

But yeah, the Rusting Hulks are my go-to squad because of the area damage over time and you can pull off cool moves if you can use the smoke effectively. Also, Chen Rong on either the jet or pulse is insanely good since you can hit-and-run on jet or bunce-and-run on pulse.

i can not get hazardous mecs to work on hard though

in fact i can barely get them to work on normal lol

I've played them ONCE and won.
The key, I found, was upgrading damage in sync with upgrading healing-from-killing. Because attacking and not killing something hurts in the long run. So if you cant kill it don't attack it or kill it with a hazard etc.

@Reck: If you need help winning in general, the damage team of [Combat, Rocket, Boulder] is solid, especially if you focus all your core into damage upgrades. Rocket and Combat are capable of 4 damage attacks and it gets better with terrain/hazards, etc. I used that team to beat HARD mode and it took ~3 tries. I've found that the best order for islands (for hard) is Detritus -> Archive -> RST. Detritus and the poison helps you increase your damage output, Archive is a great easy island, and I favor RST over Pinnacle since Pinnacle can be a nightmare. Cap damage, buff your power grid, and rush the final island as fast as you can. Also the pilot who's immune to web/clouds is great for Hard mode since webbing quickly becomes a problem.