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Comments
It's not like it was bad, but it was unbalanced. It got more noticeable later in the game- the only bit I could play through myself was after the second barrow-wight, but dear god was it noticeable then.
I might rag on Dark Souls for its' combat system being bullshit, but at least Dark Souls' combat system is good. This games' combat system is both bullshit and bad, which turns the bullshit from being a thing into being a thing that makes the bad even worse.
So, the Harley Quinn DLC was finally released for the PC version of Arkham City.
Also my gold subscription ran out before I could all 2 people here. :<
Started up P3P again. On normal, no NG+. Maybe I should've just chosen Maniac, as this is a bit too easy for me. Also, wow, the social links in the male route are terrible.
Well, now I want to play X1 again. Already did a Buster only run of the game.
Bought Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning today. It was on special for $64.
>So, the Harley Quinn DLC was finally released for the PC version of Arkham City.
It's pretty good, not amazing, but worth ten bucks if you like Batman as much as I do.
Also Immma wait on getting a Vita because there will be an inevitable price drop between now and the time P4: Golden comes out.
Dracula X is hard.
But fun.
gah why is this game making me install Origins ;_;
Wait, really? It didn't do that when I bought it on Steam.
I bought a physical copy, so... maybe.
Luckily for me, when I created an account on The Old Republic, it auto-created me an Origins account anyway~
Yeah, but having an Origin account doesn't cause it to periodically scan your hard drive to make sure you're a good little consumer like installing it does.
Well, that sucks.
Saw the DMC trailer. If the gameplay ends up being good, I'll probably reconsider my "Fuck this game" current stance.
Why are developers moving to always on DRM?
Apparently the Sim City game wont allow roll back loading for a city
Which version of Dracula X, Eelektross?
Welp, mission accomplished.
Even if the DMC game is good on its own merits, I can't accept it as Devil May Cry. Not thematically anyways.
They tried to keep in the camp to some level (though it's still very much a 'darker' take), but they forget that part of what made it fun was that Dante was actually pretty dorky. This seems to be making him into another dull one-liner slinger.
Hey Alex read this.
Since, y'know, in-depth analysis of design decisions behind particular video games is like... your thing.
Or at least it's your thing that isn't swords.
My feelings on a nutshell, yeah.
^^ Danke for the link. Readin'.
Okay, so I've read the first couple of pages and this is pretty interesting stuff, especially since it's been so long since I played Final Fantasy VI. A lot of things that hold true in the narrative design for that game also hold true in The Witcher 2, which is about as JRPG as WRPGs ever get. Perhaps the most important of those is strong characterisation of the villain, so they become not only a mechanical obstacle but an active force within the mind of the player. In fact, most satisfying RPG experiences provide a good central villain and some kind of meaningful plot resolution with them -- Dragon Age and Dragon's Dogma are two other good examples.
A game is kind of like a glorified obstacle course in a lot of ways, so a strong villain consolidates those obstacles under a common theme and allows the player to know, or at least feel, the abstract force or concept they're railing against. In Final Fantasy VI, it's chaos; in Dragon Age, authoritarianism. So it's really cool when a game nails a good villain, because it validates all of the struggle involved in getting to that point, thereby providing a more satisfying experience.
Definitely agreed about plots like that needing a strong antagonist to justify "why am I doing all this".
Also posted the article to Caves of Narshe.
"Why am I doing all this?" is a question that works on a few different levels, though, and a good villain should work on multiple levels. For instance, Tales of Phantasia has the main villain destroy the main character's village, forcing them to move onward and compelling them to seek out the person who did this. The villain's motivation for his actions is in seeking enough power to save the World Tree, the world's source of mana and its essential lifeblood. On one level, this could read like an anti-environmentalism tract, but the heroes of the story have a major role in saving the World Tree themselves. What the story is really about is compromise; both the heroes of the villain seek to solve the same problem, but the villain is willing to visit slaughter upon innocents to succeed whereas the heroes are dedicated to a much more humane approach.
So the villain in Tales of Phantasia is really an argument against extremism and the perspective of "the end justifies the means". You're not just fighting against the literal force that robbed the main character of a home and family, but the abstract force of extremist militance. It's important that a villain works on both levels in a game that places emphasis on its plot and characters. For bonus points, it should be ensured that every major obstacle relates to the theme of the villain.
I think one of the places where Mass Effect failed was in overall thematic solidarity. One of its strongest points was how it contained a wealth of smaller, side plots very much in the vein of traditional, high-concept science fiction, but that didn't address the overall fight against the Reapers. It's a complete inversion of Final Fantasy VI in thematic perspective; the villains seek to impose order, while you and your shipmates are a galactic force of chaos seeking to prevent them from putting the galaxy on reset. Shepard as a force of chaos isn't a concept well explored by any of the games, though, except perhaps through his or her continuous capacity to exceed expectation.
Ahh, a very good read, though the attrition thing is kinda nulled by the fact that any character with Osmose almost always effectively means s/he has unlimited MP.
Not exactly; even osmose takes 1 MP to cast, unlike Osmose/Psych in FFIV which takes zero. (I was confused why it took zero when I first played FFIV, actually.) Also, draining undead hurts you.
SNES
^^ Hence almost always.
It always confused me that Atma/Ultima Weapon was more easily beaten by a strategy that is mentioned nowhere in the game, unless you're insane enough to interpret "made of pure energy" as "DRAIN ALL MY MP". Thankfully, the bestiary in the PS version informs you of that little tidbit.
Well, 38 Studios is officially bankrupt. Damn :c
Hopefully Epic will buy Kingdoms of Amalur (since Rhode Island will be trying to sell it, since they can't really do much with it themselves), since they were nice enough to hire most of the people who were working on it.