Topic: What are you playing?

[broodwars]

Rolled credits on Nioh 3 and Ender Magnolia: Bloom in the Mist, both with 100% completion.

Nioh 3 is...OK. I really wonder if all the lavish praise for this entry comes from people who simply didn't play the 1st 2 Niohs, because this game really is just OK. The "Open World" is both "unnecessary" AND "a lie." The former is because it adds nothing to the Nioh experience. If anything, having to actually have a coherent world severely undercuts what the level designers could do with any given scenario, and the few times the missions have any life to them is when the game has to segment off an area so the player can only enter it at an appointed time and has to proceed through it in a linear fashion.

Where the designers try to inject some variety into the game is where the "lie" comes in: this isn't an open world game. It's 2 medium-sized fields and 1 small-sized field representing different time periods bridged by linear levels pretending to be other time periods. If you actually came here for the Open World experience, I think you'll find it extremely jarring how the game's structure is a sandwich, with the game world actively getting smaller as you progress until it expands out again at the end.

Overall, this is easily the weakest of the Nioh games, especially in terms of narrative. There is just so much...nothing...here. Characters just flit in an out of the story on a whim, and clearly you're supposed to know who all these people are, historically, ahead of time because the game does absolutely nothing to set them up. If the 1st Nioh was a good story that was convolutedly told and the 2nd Nioh was an OK story that was badly told, Nioh 3 is a bad story that is badly told. Also, I hope you really liked the bosses of the previous Nioh games, because a good chunk of the lesser ones got sloppily copy-pasted here as well.

As for Ender Magnolia, I like the game but it feels too eager to be a "sequel" for my tastes, such that the game rushes through mechanics it took you the entirety of Ender Lilies to build up. For instance, I don't remember Lilies allowing the player to form a full 4 person party until very late in the game. You have a full party in Magnolia in the 1st hour. Where Lilies took its time to build dread; isolation; mystery; & gloom, Magnolia has what passes for entire towns of chatty NPCs that you regularly return to.

What IS a definite improvement over the first game is the in-game map, which is so much clearer to read than Lilies' map was and it VERY helpfully color-codes areas based on whether you've found all the secrets. That said, there were still some times when I got stuck trying to figure out where I needed to go to proceed. I wish the game was better at nudging you in the right direction.

It also takes Magnolia a while to ramp up the difficulty. I remember struggling with bosses in Lilies pretty early on, but Magnolia is a cakewalk until probably about halfway in. At that point, the switch gets flipped and enemies start doing absolutely absurd amounts of damage, including status effects. In both games, you WILL master the parry and dodge or you will die, but Magnolia pretends its lighter fare for much longer.

Story-wise, I feel like Lilies told a better story, but Magnolia tells a more complicated one with more moving parts.

Overall, Ender Magnolia is excellent, but I just prefer Lilies more.

[Evan_B]

I finally rolled credits on Hades. As it turns out, when you go to people who have played a ridiculous amount, they can explain all the mechanics that the game itself does a pretty terrible job at communicating.

It’s very frustrating that this should be the gold standard for roguelikes, as its production values feel so far removed from what can be achieved by a studio that would consider this sort of gameplay loop. Also, it’s pretty annoying to see how low effort some of the boons can be, and how the game is bloated to an absurd degree by the favors/items that you can equip. The number of encounters required to boost some of their levels just feels a bit counter to the progression momentum the game can have when you know what you’re doing. Also, the shop system is genuinely terrible and I cannot believe the purchase ratios.

Overall, Hades can’t help but fall into some of the familiar trappings of the genre from which it stems, though one of the most surprising is its lack of variety. The Heat system using number-fudging for the majority of its “punishments” is simply not enticing enough on the surface, and seeing how Erebus gates are shockingly infrequent and generally unrewarding in comparison with the escalating challenge placed upon the player feels much more demotivating than anything. On one hand, I can’t help but come down hard on this game for these reasons because they are aspects that don’t appeal to me, though I can see how they might be enjoyable to another type of player. They are monotonous and incremental in all the ways that people tend to bemoan other types of games, so… when in Rome. But I also find Hades frustrating due to its moments of brilliance buried deep under the muck: the absolutely ungodly amount of voiced dialogue and flavor text, for example, which often feels wasted because these interactions are at odds with the snappiness of the game and genre design. The overall quality of the art, which results in the mundanity/predictable nature of the gameplay experience. There is something of value to be found in Hades, certainly… but I feel that the praise is heaped on all the most problematic aspects of its design.

I am glad to say that I’ve finally “completed” a Supergiant game, which is ironic, considering the endless nature of this title in particular. I think it gets by far too often on its rehashing of Greek mythology, which makes some of the developers’ most tedious writing and gameplay design a bit more palatable. While a part of me would be somewhat interested to see how far I’d have to go for new dialogue to stop revealing itself, I have other games to play and I think that particular aspect of bloat is the most annoying part of all. That I have to keep grinding resources to invest in these relationships that are eventually going to result in more flavor text, which means I have to engage in an endless gameplay loop that has long worn-out its welcome, all for the possibility of some final modifiers to weapons and favors and chambers that really won’t do much to change the experience is why I can imagine people feel that they got a bang for their buck with Hades. But, hot take: I have played more games in the last few years that I like for respecting my time than games which overpromise on the vastness of their content.

[broodwars]

I finally rolled credits on Hades. As it turns out, when you go to people who have played a ridiculous amount, they can explain all the mechanics that the game itself does a pretty terrible job at communicating.

I find Hades incredibly frustrating. I've made 2 serious attempts to get through that game, but I've never managed a successful run and I don't understand what I'm doing wrong. I haven't had too much trouble getting through all the Rogue-likes inspired by Hades (shout-out to TMNT: Splintered Fate & The Rogue Prince of Persia), but I just find this game incredibly tedious; often boring; and just overly punishing. Like, what is even the point of the little gem you can throw at enemies? Yeah there are some boons that made enemies take additional damage if they have one of those things, but if you don't have those boons that attack seems pointless. And most of the weapons just plain suck in my experience, particularly the bow, and you have to dump a fair amount of difficult-to-obtain special currency just to make them suck less.

It just feels like you have to put in way more time and energy than you should to "unlock the fun" of that game, because you are so underpowered at the start that it feels almost a waste of time to try to make a serious effort at getting through the game.

I know the game has a "God Mode" where the game starts permanently upping your damage reduction the more times you die, and the last time I played the game I swallowed my pride and started using it, but I still just find that game not very fun to play.

Got a few games to talk about, myself, but I'll use some separate posts for that.

[broodwars]

I've rolled credits on 2 games recently, so I'll start with Escape from Ever After, a blatant Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door Clone I only knew existed because Yahtzee reviewed it.

Overall, it's excellent and surprisingly polished for what I believe is a 2 person-developed Kickstarter game. I've had bad experiences with Kickstarter games, but this is one of the good ones and at half the length (and price) of your typical Paper Mario game it ends just when it's starting to overstay its welcome.

The premise is pretty simple: you are the hero of a fairytale story. You arrive at the castle at the end of your story to slay your dragon...only to discover the place conquered already and turned into a white collar office workplace by an evil corporation invading the worlds of literature to exploit them for resources. In order to take the company down, you to journey to several other worlds based on fairy tales; pulp Sci-Fi; pirates; and Lovecraft and recruit more followers to your party.

The writing in general is pretty solid with some poignant moments towards the end, but I don't feel like it's as funny as it wants you to think it is and as a fan of the character, I feel like Sherlock Holmes was extremely under-used and out of character.

Unlike other games like this "inspired by" Paper Mario, Escape From Ever After restricts itself pretty closely to the general game design of Thousand Year Door, including its 2-character battle system, though it does let you swap out both characters instead of just having 1 dedicated partner character. Definitely don't neglect the Tower of 100 trials, as some of the 10 floor rewards you can get fairly early feel almost mandatory for the later parts of the game.

I quite enjoyed the game, particularly the soundtrack (which ranges in style from chiptune to Big Band). If you like these sorts of games, check it out.

https://youtu.be/Z1hHZlAJ2E0?si=D-gomRf1LOMjTrbR

[broodwars]

Next up is Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight, a game I picked up when Amazon was offering the +$20 deluxe edition for the same price as the regular edition.

The game is, overall, a tribute to all the Batman '89 and onward live action movies, with a little Batman '66 and Batman: TAS love and a LOT of the Batman Arkham gameplay sprinkled in (including a pale imitation of its combat system).

The story attempts to clumsily string together the stories of all those movies, and sometimes it really works and sometimes it feels like Traveler's Tales just really didn't give a damn. I get the distinct impression that the devs don't particularly like The Batman or Batman Begins, because the early parts of the game focused on their versions of Batman's origin story feel like they go on forever and are utterly boring. I don't feel like the game really hits its stride until Chapter 2 when it starts adapting the Tim Burton films, when suddenly life enters the cutscenes and performances.

Baffling-ly, Batman Forever gets 1 whole stage devoted to it in a chapter that's mainly devoted to Batman & Robin's version of Poison Ivy. It's a real shame, because Traveler's Tales clearly "gets" the neon-infused style of that movie, but barely gets to use it. And Batman & Robin's Mr. Freeze gets 1 whole boss fight in a chapter that's mainly devoted to homaging Batman: The Animated Series. Why even GO with that (terrible) version of Mr. Freeze if you wanted to homage the version of the franchise that MADE people give a damn about Mr. Freeze?

The writing is pretty hit-or-miss, especially at the start when the game just seems aggressively not funny.  Like the rest of the game, it improves a lot once the movies with more personality come in, and there are some pretty solid jokes at the expense of the Snyder and Nolan films by the end. Hell, the game somehow makes The Dark Knight Rises' version of Bane an enjoyable character by completely taking the piss out of his "returning Gotham to YOU, THE PEOPLE" message. The vocal performances are all over the place. There were times I wanted to reach out and punch Batgirl's voice actress because she was over-acting when it wasn't warranted.

The game seems to have a problem picking a tone. Sometimes it's just "silly" like every other Lego "thing" out there, and other times it wants to be sincere when I'm not sure it's earned it. The game struggles to find a balance until late into the game.

From a gameplay perspective, this is one incredibly buggy game. The grappling hook often just plain doesn't work. You'll hit the button mid-flight, and the game will send you right into the bottom of an object because it ended up between where you were and the thing you were grappling. You can't grapple onto tether lines like you can in the Arkham games, so characters like Nightwing and Robin that specialize in stringing tethers to walk across feel somewhat pointless. I had my PS5 hard crash on me at one point for no apparent reason, not to mention quest lines that broke until I closed the game completely and re-loaded. My camera got locked facing a spinning floor any time I try to play as Nightwing during the Mr. Freeze fight. The game is just a technical mess at times.

And yet, like Escape from Ever After, I do think this is one of the best games of the year when it's firing on all cylinders. There are some inspired levels in here, there are some solid jokes, clear love for the source material (and those involved in making it), and we haven't had a good Batman Arkham game like this since...Arkham City. They even paid for the licensed music from the films in question, including a surprise entry for the end credits. It is worth a playthrough, and I look forward to playing the story DLC whenever it comes out.

[broodwars]

Last on the list, I'm currently playing my way through Yoshi & the Mysterious Book, a game that ended up being absolutely not what I expecting. I thought it was another Yoshi platformer and I was eager to play another Yoshi platformer, but what we got was...an adventure puzzle game about unlocking achievements. Yeah, I enjoy trophy hunting, but I really wasn't expecting an entire game based on that and I still think I would have preferred something like a Woolly World port over this.

It took me a while to start vibing with the game for what it is, but I'm enjoying the game in short sessions. It feels like Yoshi-meets-Winnie the Pooh. Like the modern Zelda games, though, it feels like this is meant to more be a collection of mechanics to just poke at and see what happens than an actual coherent game experience with goals and stakes.

I'm working my way through the Chapter 2 creatures right now, and I'm not sure what the actual point of this game is going to end up being. It really doesn't help that some of the hints towards Discoveries are very badly written, particularly the ones based on music. There were a few I had to look up online because even the Level 2 hints you pay 100 tokens to unlock can be extremely vague about what the game expects you to do.

[Evan_B]

I suppose I should also add some new content to my ranting.

I completed 9 Years of Shadows in short order. It’s a brisk, beautiful pixel art Metroidvania that seems to have pissed some online community off because of some of its design choices and odd performance quirks. I spawned into a dark room once and experienced a few sound issues but a soft reset and even returning to the main menu often fixed things. Anyway, I thought it had some cool ideas and movement options and didn’t have incredibly high expectations, and so wound up pleasantly surprised.

Continuing the theme, I’ve sunk a single playthrough into Marfusha, a indie tower defense roguelike about being an expendable foot soldier for a corrupt nationalist regime. You know, escapism. Anyway, it was fine, I seemed to get the mechanics rather quickly, in which the game balances currency accumulation with intensifying taxes to maintain a “skin of your teeth” mentality. Despite its predictable gameplay loop, part of the meta progression and challenge comes from deliberately handicapping yourself with lame-duck assists in order to learn about the larger cast of the game. It’s not a masterpiece, but it does what it sets out to do competently.

And lastly, Decline’s Drops is another game touting platform-fighter (i.e. Smash Bros.) style movement in a traditional platforming level design and progression. It delivers on that, though the enemies are hardly complex or challenging enough to warrant the attack moveset you possess. The game features hand drawn character art which is very lovingly animated, as well as a very chill soundtrack that does a lot of heavy lifting in evoking a Smash-style adventure mode.