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Gripe about What You're Playing 2: Bellyache-tric Boogaloo

What's the problem with the currency? I'm not trying to tell you that you are wrong, I'm just confused what you mean. Is it that you lose it, if you die? Elsewise it's normal currency, right?
 
FelixSH said:
What's the problem with the currency? I'm not trying to tell you that you are wrong, I'm just confused what you mean. Is it that you lose it, if you die? Elsewise it's normal currency, right?
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Right. I'm referring to losing it and the dark spirit or whatever you need to kill if you die to reclaim them. It's an unnecessary Dark-Souls-ification that just feels punitive and arbitrary. It's especially eye-rolly when the currency is what you use buy the charms that provide functions that should just be default like, I dunno, locating yourself on the map. Combat also reminds me a tad of Metroid Dread, another game I'm not a huge fan of. When it comes to a Metroidvania my enjoyment is more on the exploratory side, not the action side. I expect some friction but the combat here, like Dread, I find more irritating than rewarding.

They almost have a great game but it's the little things that are starting to add up. I'm still playing it here and there and making progress but I can't honestly tell if I'm having fun or just stubborn.

It's funny because I'm also playing through Lies of P (for the third time) and I often think to myself while playing, "Boy, this game is way easier and less inconvenient than Hollow Knight." (The difficulty of Lies of P is overstated but that's another conversation.)

I hope the sequel, which is never coming out, fixes some of my qualms with the game. That would be peachy because I really want to like this. But I guess we'll never know since the sequel is never coming out. 😭

At least the game has great vibes. Beautiful artwork.
 
I can't imagine things changing too much there. As an example, I don't like that you have to find the dude who sells you maps, and until then, you simply have no idea were you are. But there are enough people who enjoy this. I assume it's similar with other things. Not sure about the popularity of the corpse run. Didn't mind it much, but wouldn't mind seeing it go.

The only thing I'm sure will not change is the difficulty. I assume, I'm far from alone in loving especially the bosses, and wouldn't love them as much, if they weren't that hard.

Not saying you are wrong, I just feel like I wouldn't get my hopes up too much. Or maybe I'm wrong, who knows.
 
FelixSH said:
The only thing I'm sure will not change is the difficulty. I assume, I'm far from alone in loving especially the bosses, and wouldn't love them as much, if they weren't that hard.
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You're not. Obviously everyone's taste is their own, but the reason I loved Hollow Knight's combat is that it's deliberate, much like how it felt in (say it with me, everyone) Dark Souls. You can't just go around button mashing and expect to win every encounter. You need to know the timing of your enemies' (and your own) attacks, and you need to learn when to take your opportunities to strike. I like when a game rewards a player for building their skills and knowledge. I guess that's also why I like playing kaizo SMW hacks.
 
I could've enjoyed the obscurantist design and super gradual accumulation of knowledge and power in Hollow Knight if it weren't for the damn corpse runs.
 
4-So said:
I'm trying real, real hard to enjoy Hollow Knight but it's making it incredibly difficult. So many baffling design decisions, like everything being a fucking charm or whatever they are, the Dark Souls-ish Geo currency, limited benches + re-traversal, the general difficulty, etc.

At this point it feels a lot like Tunic only in the sense of "highly-praised game actually total fucking dogwater to 4-So."
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What is Tunic like? I tried it for a while and then got a bit bored of it
 
Baudshaw said:
What is Tunic like? I tried it for a while and then got a bit bored of it
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Isometric Zelda. Very secret heavy, if I remember right. Another game with neat art and music that I don't particular enjoy. I remember it being boring and slow and some of the puzzles related to the forced perspective irritated me. Biggest downer for me, though, was the difficulty due to the combat not being very refined but I'm told this gets better the further into the game you get.
 
I didn't hate it, but I'm also not sure it was worth it, given a lot of the blow back the game gets is specifically related to the map system, and I don't think it adds that much over just having an auto-completing one.
 
So I've been liking the Links Awakening Remake for the most part after finally getting around to playing it now that the frame rate issues are addressed on Switch. My main complaint though is some of the bosses just didn't quite translate correctly to the more complex physics of the remake, and the Armos Knight is the prime example of this. I had to look it up on online to verify I had the correct idea of how to fight it. It was just that the physics were being fussy on what constituted an appropriate angle of attack.
 
Playing Terranigma past the underworld area for the first time since I originally tried playing through and got stuck around the birds I think...

Probably the inevitable conclusion since I'm going back and playing a B-tier action RPG from decades ago, but I'm thoroughly underwhelmed. Honestly feels like a combination of Soulblazer and Illusion of Gaia, but not quite living up to them in their respective strong areas. Combat feels simultaneously more robust than it's prequels, but also jankier and more dated when compared to modern games. The simplicity of the previous two works better in retrospect.

I get why it's mythologize as a hidden gem. Not getting a North American release but a PAL one gives it either a mystique or a cause to celebrate it depending on which side of the Atlantic you're on, plus that underworld map effect will always be dope as hell and an immediate eye catcher. I have to be the contrarian here though and say the previous two games are better.
 
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It's certainly some kind of notable that I've finished both Soul Blazer and Illusion of Gaia, but never Terranigma.
 
I do like Terranigma longer, until you get to the part where humans are around, and you lose the ability to speak with animals and plants. But yeah, Soul Blazer is the strongest, imo. Haven't played Illusion of Gaia in forever, so can't judge that. But the simplicity of Soul Blazer works so, so well, the slightly higher complexity, regarding story and how quests work, and losing the weirdness of being able to talk to plants and animals, makes me enjoy Terranigma less, as it goes on.
 
Becksworth said:
Playing Terranigma past the underworld area for the first time since I originally tried playing through and got stuck around the birds I think...

Probably the inevitable conclusion since I'm going back and playing a B-tier action RPG from decades ago, but I'm thoroughly underwhelmed. Honestly feels like a combination of Soulblazer and Illusion of Gaia, but not quite living up to them in their respective strong areas. Combat feels simultaneously more robust than it's prequels, but also jankier and more dated when compared to modern games. The simplicity of the previous two works better in retrospect.

I get why it's mythologize as a hidden gem. Not getting a North American release but a PAL one gives it either a mystique or a cause to celebrate it depending on which side of the Atlantic you're on, plus that underworld map effect will always be dope as hell and an immediate eye catcher. I have to be the contrarian here though and say the previous two games are better.
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LOL I made an entire ass thread about this lol: https://talking-time.net/index.php?...quintets-gaia-trilogy-here-are-my-takes.2902/

But yeah, I think Terranigma definitely drags more than either Illusion of Gaia or Soul Blazer, which is rather remarkable considering how many moments in Illusion just have you...wait. My friend also had some choice words about the aesthetics of the human built areas, and how they usually looked very "samey", and I definitely think the game loses a lot of its charm etc once it hits its third act and humans get involved everywhere lol.

I think Terranigma is still a good game, provided you either stop before Act 3, or somehow power past it into the final Act, which is actually suitably climactic, and closes off the game stunningly. Otherwise it just becomes a huge, unbearable slog.
 
This discussion makes me wonder if there are any Terranigma romhacks that try to address issues with Act 3.
 
Playing Star Ocean: First Departure R and having a decent time but for the love of god give me an option to just mute voices. At least in battle. Good god. Is it a 10 out of 10, Ilia? Yeah? Is it?!

It's wild that there's an English option and two different Japanese options but no way to turn it off. Ugh
 
Lies of P is finally the price it needed to be for me to check it out, free with an existing subscription. I have only played it for around an hour and it is doing nothing for me. FromSoft games have already worn out their welcome for me at this point, so a blatant copy of one, while of fine quality, has my brain trying to reject it outright.

I feel bad dismissing it so completely. People obviously worked hard on it.


It is just so much like Bloodborne, I can’t believe they weren’t sued.
 
I think I’ll give it another hour or so before I delete it. I did spend the better part of last evening downloading it.
 
I didn't like Lies of P either, and I finished it. The whole thematic and aesthetic crux of the game reads as laughable to me, and it's baffling that the game insists on being so self-serious about it all the way through. The writing voice is what sinks the whole production for me, though: it has aspirations of being florid and verbose, but the localization is notably poor, with awkward phrasing and line-by-line flow at every turn; all its evocations of mood ended up self-sabotaging themselves because of it. I'll give it the final boss sequence and end credits stinger for making me laugh a lot though--at it, not with it, but it's something.
 
Kazin said:
Playing Star Ocean: First Departure R and having a decent time but for the love of god give me an option to just mute voices. At least in battle. Good god. Is it a 10 out of 10, Ilia? Yeah? Is it?!

It's wild that there's an English option and two different Japanese options but no way to turn it off. Ugh
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There isn't a voices slider in the volume options? Most games these days will let you adjust whole categories of sound to different levels. Surprising if there isn't for this.
 
My partner and I are in the very late game in Date Everything, and I have a very particular gripe about a mechanic that was not at all communicated with the player before it became important:

You can't Realize characters who you got a Hate ending with, which is never explained. Previously, the game explicitly said that even getting a Hate ending is okay, because you're still progressing through the game and improving your stats, but now we're locked out of Realizing two characters (and maybe therefore also Skylar?) because we can't get candies for their appropriate stats. I get that they want to encourage multiple playthroughs, but after 50+ hours in this one I don't have the time or inclination to play again at this point.

Edited to add: we finished the game tonight and discovered that this still doesn't prevent you from Realizing Skylar after all, so at least there's that. But because of an actual bug, we were locked out of Realizing Scandalabra, which is frustrating in its own way. Particularly since the devs have apparently been aware of this bug for over a month now. I'm not mad at them at all -- the game is big, with a ton of moving parts -- just bummed that we couldn't finish this character arc.
 
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Wheel World has a bunch of issues and I'm going to give up on it. Collision detection is bizarre, the other racers have issues and I can't even figure out if they're pathfinding issues or also collision or what. I got to the first big challenge, got my prize and it wasn't that much better than the bike parts I already had, but the whole point of the game is to get these legendary parts. And ultimately the gameplay loop isn't that fun, and every conversation has like 20% too many words.

It's too bad because I was enjoying it when I first started playing. I liked biking around, it seemed like I'd keep unlocking more cool bike upgrades, but everything is just stagnant and after playing a couple hours it's just not worth playing more. Good music though.
 
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