What game are you playing?

[KnightBrolaire]

I used to play stick back in the day but it's been prob 10 years since I played a fighter consistently.

grinding my way up the ranked ladder in Tekken. The Mayflash fightstick is alright. The joystick feels kind of sloppy. The buttons are fine.

 

[rokket2005]

I was playing Persona 5 Tactica, got about 8 hours in and the nicest way to put it is that it's poorly executed. All of the characters that have had multiple entries for development at this point have been reduced to caricatures of themselves, and I'm not talking about the art style. Completely unsubstantial dialogue for what hltb says has been about a third of the game. The tactics combat is in the style of Mario + Rabbids, except it has about a quarter of the depth of that game.
The nail in the coffin for me was when a member of the party gets shot in the abdomen and starts bleeding out on the battlefield. Everyone else in the party is like, This is real bad. "Oh shit," I think to myself, "Is something of importance actually going to happen finally?" No. The Wonderland hat creatures that live in this alternate dimension show up to let you escape and when you get back to your base the one who was about to die is like, "Oh don't worry I'm all good now." I played about an hour past this part and nothing has been said about it since. I understand that the scenario writers for the main series are probably busy on P6 at this point, but it's just the most dogshit boring writing in a video game I've experienced in I don't know how long. The game has demon fusion, which it should, but if that's all it has for it I'll just go play SMT 5 again.

I also started playing Valkyria Chronicles 4. I started it years ago and put it aside for something else, always thought about going back to it. A couple hours in and it's pretty good so far. Some interesting systems and such, and I immediately placed Lechter and Musse as two of the main characters. I never really listened for who was voicing characters before, but since there's so much carryover in modern RPG voice casting it's hard not to now.

 

[p0ke]

Defeated the spider boss in DS2, so now I guess I've lit all the primal bonfires. Pretty easy with the summon, got it on my first attempt even though I only had 1 estus left when I got to the fight. Had to use a couple of consumable healing items though, mainly because the small spiders would gang up on me. There's a lot of different healing items in this game in general! In DS1/DS3/ER I only recall finding a handful throughout but in this one I've got like 10 different ones, some of which also cure poison etc. to use once I run out of estus. Which is not a bad thing...

Then I went back to the Iron Keep to fight the pursuer in the smelter demon room, because I wanted the ring he drops. Fought him with my Bastard Sword first and got about 50% into his health bar before I failed to dodge his combo. It would've taken like 15 minutes to defeat him with the sword, because the damage was miniscule. Then I tried again with the Craftman's Hammer, and with that I beat him in seconds and got the ring. So now I can go to all the other pursuer areas and collect the upgrade materials...

Then I read about another rat boss being in the Doors of Pharros area, so went to investigate that. I only had one lockstone, and surprise surprise, didn't find the right door, so I didn't get to the boss yet. I guess I gotta check the wiki to find more lockstones...

 

[wankerness]

Defeated the spider boss in DS2, so now I guess I've lit all the primal bonfires. Pretty easy with the summon, got it on my first attempt even though I only had 1 estus left when I got to the fight. Had to use a couple of consumable healing items though, mainly because the small spiders would gang up on me. There's a lot of different healing items in this game in general! In DS1/DS3/ER I only recall finding a handful throughout but in this one I've got like 10 different ones, some of which also cure poison etc. to use once I run out of estus. Which is not a bad thing...

Then I went back to the Iron Keep to fight the pursuer in the smelter demon room, because I wanted the ring he drops. Fought him with my Bastard Sword first and got about 50% into his health bar before I failed to dodge his combo. It would've taken like 15 minutes to defeat him with the sword, because the damage was miniscule. Then I tried again with the Craftman's Hammer, and with that I beat him in seconds and got the ring. So now I can go to all the other pursuer areas and collect the upgrade materials...

Then I read about another rat boss being in the Doors of Pharros area, so went to investigate that. I only had one lockstone, and surprise surprise, didn't find the right door, so I didn't get to the boss yet. I guess I gotta check the wiki to find more lockstones...

I don't think you need a lockstone to get to the boss in the doors of pharros, I think the stuff you need keys for is pretty much just some weapons. There are two 3-part doors where you only need to open the center panel to get in, and then there's like one other one that has something useful and it opens a door on the lower level under it so I usually depend on messages from other players to remember which switch to use. The pharros keys can drop off the rats in there I think (rare drop).

If you spend like 6000 souls at that vendor whos in the side hallway of the entrance to iron keep and then talk to him he'll give you a +1 gold serpent ring, which increases item drop rate.

 

[p0ke]

I don't think you need a lockstone to get to the boss in the doors of pharros, I think the stuff you need keys for is pretty much just some weapons. There are two 3-part doors where you only need to open the center panel to get in, and then there's like one other one that has something useful and it opens a door on the lower level under it so I usually depend on messages from other players to remember which switch to use. The pharros keys can drop off the rats in there I think (rare drop).

If you spend like 6000 souls at that vendor whos in the side hallway of the entrance to iron keep and then talk to him he'll give you a +1 gold serpent ring, which increases item drop rate.

Good to know. I'm not playing online because I don't wanna pay for Xbox Live, so I don't see messages... I just look stuff up on the wiki instead
I did see where the fog gate is, but it seems like at least one locked door needs to be opened to reach it. I've also yet to discover what's up with all these enemies just standing around - I guess they'll activate once something happens?

 

[p0ke]

Ok, found and killed the rat. I don't know why I didn't find the path before, but now I did. I was expecting something more difficult, but at least it wasn't another armor guy... I died a couple of times because it's been a long time since I fought Sif, so I didn't remember how to fight him, but once I stayed under his belly all the time I killed him easily.

So I guess Drangleic Castle next.

 

[wankerness]

FYI the boss in doors of pharros is one of the hardest in the game, because of the BS pull to start the fight. If you can AOE down the adds instantly then it's merely a janky version of Sif, but if you don't kill all the adds before they get you with toxic, you're screwed. I usually save it for when I'm really high level because it doesn't drop anything good anyway and it's totally optional. It kind of reminds me of the Capra demon in DS1 but worse cause there are more "dogs" and they inflict toxic in 2 hits.

Good to know. I'm not playing online because I don't wanna pay for Xbox Live, so I don't see messages... I just look stuff up on the wiki instead
I did see where the fog gate is, but it seems like at least one locked door needs to be opened to reach it. I've also yet to discover what's up with all these enemies just standing around - I guess they'll activate once something happens?

Not sure what you're referring to. I guess there's a few statue dwarves in there? They just remain statues forever. The majority of enemies in the area don't stand still, though. FYI there's this NPC called Gavlan that you can interact with in no-man's wharf, then harvest valley, then he moves here permanently that sells poison arrows. Poison arrows are possibly the most overpowered item in the game, since here if you poison an enemy it will drain like 1/4 of their health in like 20 seconds (as opposed to DS1 where they'll drain like 10% of their health in like 3 minutes). They will make your life infinitely easier on a couple upcoming fights, particularly the one with two giants in the dark cave below Black Gulch.

 

[p0ke]

Not sure what you're referring to. I guess there's a few statue dwarves in there? They just remain statues forever. The majority of enemies in the area don't stand still, though.

Maybe my game's bugging out then. There's a whole bunch of enemies in the area who are just standing around, doing their idle animation but just won't interact in any way. I can't even hit them.

 

[p0ke]

Maybe my game's bugging out then. There's a whole bunch of enemies in the area who are just standing around, doing their idle animation but just won't interact in any way. I can't even hit them.

Never mind. I googled - it's not a bug, it happened because I've joined the rat covenant.

 

[p0ke]

Ok, so I went to Drangleic Castle. I'm not even gonna say it because y'all probably already guessed what I would've said about the area There's some pretty crappy level design here though - mainly the way to the castle. Why the hell isn't there a bonfire next to the bridge that leads to the castle? I died a couple of times just when I had reached the castle because there's just so much going on, so then I had to run all the way from the woods again.

Then I finally managed to get to the bridge after having killed a bunch of normal infantry enemies and knights plus a few annoying shadow enemies, kill the elephant enemies, kill the archers, kill the armored knight guys who ambush you, enter the castle, kill another couple of knights and then kill the npc invader, then I go searching for the bonfire and almost get wiped out by statues that suddenly come alive... And then I finally found the bonfire. Sheesh. Yeah I get that this is an endgame area so it's supposed to be tough, but like I said there should've at least been a bonfire outside the castle.

And now apparently the rest of the castle is typical Zelda-stuff - fight all the previous mid-level bosses again. Luckily the actual boss (2 dragon riders) at least had a summon sign close to it. Now I just genuinely don't know where to go -> I defeated the chariot and went up to the roof and killed the gargoyle, but after that? Not a clue yet.

 

[wankerness]

Ok, so I went to Drangleic Castle. I'm not even gonna say it because y'all probably already guessed what I would've said about the area There's some pretty crappy level design here though - mainly the way to the castle. Why the hell isn't there a bonfire next to the bridge that leads to the castle? I died a couple of times just when I had reached the castle because there's just so much going on, so then I had to run all the way from the woods again.

Then I finally managed to get to the bridge after having killed a bunch of normal infantry enemies and knights plus a few annoying shadow enemies, kill the elephant enemies, kill the archers, kill the armored knight guys who ambush you, enter the castle, kill another couple of knights and then kill the npc invader, then I go searching for the bonfire and almost get wiped out by statues that suddenly come alive... And then I finally found the bonfire. Sheesh. Yeah I get that this is an endgame area so it's supposed to be tough, but like I said there should've at least been a bonfire outside the castle.

And now apparently the rest of the castle is typical Zelda-stuff - fight all the previous mid-level bosses again. Luckily the actual boss (2 dragon riders) at least had a summon sign close to it. Now I just genuinely don't know where to go -> I defeated the chariot and went up to the roof and killed the gargoyle, but after that? Not a clue yet.

The point of that area is it's one of those big, climactic gauntlets. Having a bonfire outside of the castle would run counter to what it was trying to do. It's like in Elden Ring where you have to go ALL the way down that huge crater and through a bunch of ruins before you get to a grace. It builds tension!

If you just hang back and pull things instead of rushing in it's easy. Bows are your friend.

In drangleic, the first time you're in there, you're supposed to go in that room right by the bonfire with all the statues, and then kill them next to the doors. The doors unlock when they absorb a soul. There are 6 doors, 5 of them have minibosses in them and the first one to the right is the progression path. That room is really, really good soul farming plus the little statue guys can drop titanite slabs. Just again you have to be careful in the room cause if you run around haphazardly a ton of enemies can activate at once plus you can attract the attention of more than one guardian sentinel at once after you've unlocked their doors.

Anyway, I've been playing a lot of Dragon's Dogma 2. This game has got to be infuriating people. It's very much like the first one, it's just so user-unfriendly. The quests are ridiculously bad, with all sorts of things like "hey, wait for three days to talk to this person again" or "follow this guy at a specific time in the middle of the day (but we won't tell you when)" or "go talk to a guy in the jail and we won't tell you that the guards will all try to kill you." The fast travel items are expensive and rare (BTW, contrary to misinformation everywhere, you can NOT buy them via microtransaction) so you try and avoid using them. The tents for resting while outside of cities are extremely heavy so you can't carry more than a couple with your party at once, and if the pawn that was holding them dies you're screwed cause they go back to your storage in the city. ETCETCETC. Yet I'm addicted! I'm too early in the game to have unlocked any of the advanced classes, but I'm to the second major region now.

 

[p0ke]

^ yeah, I already did that. Said room was pretty tough because I would accidentally wake too many enemies at once, but I made it through in the end. And the twin dragonriders were after that as well.

And yeah, I get the tension part, but at that point it just gets annoying and tedious. Same with the crater in ER, except there the danger wasn't the enemies, it was the damned ledges you could fall down from. So in a way it was even more tedious. I also had to do that part twice because that's when my save somehow reverted to an older one.

 

[p0ke]

Ok, I figured out where to go. Had to lure an enemy into a room with a bunch of statues, and then killing it made the soul go into a giant statue that activated the elevator. I beat the looking glass knight and now I'm in the next area which once again isn't very pleasant. The enemies are ok, but it's hard to tell where you can walk and where you sink.

 

[wankerness]

Ok, I figured out where to go. Had to lure an enemy into a room with a bunch of statues, and then killing it made the soul go into a giant statue that activated the elevator. I beat the looking glass knight and now I'm in the next area which once again isn't very pleasant. The enemies are ok, but it's hard to tell where you can walk and where you sink.

Shrine of Amana is notorious among melee-only people for being one of the hardest areas ever. As a big bow user, I always find it really easy if you just hang back and snipe all the casters. Definitely don't try rushing through or you'll get spammed with bolts while melee guys chunk you. There's a group of three guys towards the end too that is a nightmare if you try and take them all on at once.

You can see the edges of the water if you light a torch. However, lighting a torch also makes those underwater guys come after you from a much bigger distance. I dunno. I've been through that area so much I just know where most of the ledges are and only need a torch on the section of trick ledges where you get the estus shard (looks a lot like the similar area with the estus shard in New Londo in Dark Souls 1).

Dragon's Dogma 2 is starting to make me infuriated. You can get softlocked in this game really easily (I got to a quest where I suddenly got attacked by like 10 guys at once that were all high level, and I was level 1 cause I'd just respecced, and I absolutely could not beat them, and my only option was to revert to a save about 2 hours earlier). The lack of fast travel is just brutal, the quests are the same kind of idiotic "talk to guy in town 1, talk to guy in town 2, report back to town 1, report back to town 2" but it takes literally 30 minutes to walk between towns, it's totally outrageous. And the fast travel items in this game are heinously expensive/rare so you can't treat it the way you would in practically any RPG like this (just fast travel back and forth!). RGH!!!

 

[p0ke]

Shrine of Amana is notorious among melee-only people for being one of the hardest areas ever. As a big bow user, I always find it really easy if you just hang back and snipe all the casters. Definitely don't try rushing through or you'll get spammed with bolts while melee guys chunk you. There's a group of three guys towards the end too that is a nightmare if you try and take them all on at once.

You can see the edges of the water if you light a torch. However, lighting a torch also makes those underwater guys come after you from a much bigger distance. I dunno. I've been through that area so much I just know where most of the ledges are and only need a torch on the section of trick ledges where you get the estus shard (looks a lot like the similar area with the estus shard in New Londo in Dark Souls 1).

Hmm, ok. I didn't have any actual issue with the enemies, just gotta go really slow which I can't be bothered doing many times if I happen to die... The only problem with any enemy I actually had was with one armored guy who pushes me over the edge when I block his attack. The path to him is narrow, so unless I go absolutely straight I bounce back into the depths when I block. I guess I just shouldn't block his attack at all, but always end up doing it anyway

 

[Werecow]

And the fast travel items in this game are heinously expensive/rare so you can't treat it the way you would in practically any RPG like this (just fast travel back and forth!). RGH!!!

Sadly, that's what can occur in games with MT for game functions. They design the game to piss you off into buying them. That's what i feared and was annoyed about on seeing they had that in place

Those basic quests were a part of the reason i bounced off the first game a couple times i think. I'd spend 30 minutes or more fighting tooth and nail to get somewhere, for the quest resolution to be some bloke effectively saying "oh, ok!" at the other end. I liked the combat at first, but when that started to get samey travelling to each quest i started to get distracted by other games. Despite that, i was interested in seeing how the second one turned out.

 

[wankerness]

Sadly, that's what can occur in games with MT for game functions. They design the game to piss you off into buying them. That's what i feared and was annoyed about on seeing they had that in place

Microtransactions can't help this problem. You can't buy the teleport item (ferrystone). If you could, I honestly would think they'd balanced the game around annoying you into MTX. But, they didn't. They balanced the game around wasting your time!

I'm getting INCREDIBLY annoyed at the rampant misinfo about this game being spread around. Even one games person I've listened to for years outright released a video the other day saying "YOU CAN BUY FERRYSTONES FOR $$ AND THEY'RE EXPENSIVE IN GAME THE GAME IS BALANCED AROUND MICROTRANSACTIONS AND THEREFORE SHIT." It was just outright lying and the entire premise of the video's criticism was false. I finally had to drop their patreon.

The game sucks for lots of valid reasons! Like, it's got Baldur's Gate 3 syndrome BIGTIME where they clearly only had "act I" in a really polished form on release - the further you progress into the game the rougher things get and the more rushed it feels. And the performance really is bad - when you're in combat it doesn't really look better than the PS4 one just cause the spell effects are so weird and blurred and pixelly looking and the framerate's bad. I dunno. I think this could be as good as the first if they release a Dark Arisen style endgame for it. But the current state of it is really disappointing. A new big problem I've discovered today is that they neutered Mages/Sorcerers - you can only have FOUR spells on you at once (unlike 8 in the previous game) and you can only switch out spell loadouts at bonfires or vocation trainers, so you're stuck with an incredibly limited toolkit at all times. Ex, do you want your damage spell to be lightning, ice, or fire? Do you want your buff spell to be lightning, ice, or fire? What about utility spells? In the last game you could actually be prepared to deal with more than like two enemy types at any given time - not the case now.

 

[Werecow]

Microtransactions can't help this problem. You can't buy the teleport item (ferrystone). If you could, I honestly would think they'd balanced the game around annoying you into MTX. But, they didn't. They balanced the game around wasting your time!

I'm getting INCREDIBLY annoyed at the rampant misinfo about this game being spread around. Even one games person I've listened to for years outright released a video the other day saying "YOU CAN BUY FERRYSTONES FOR $$ AND THEY'RE EXPENSIVE IN GAME THE GAME IS BALANCED AROUND MICROTRANSACTIONS AND THEREFORE SHIT." It was just outright lying and the entire premise of the video's criticism was false. I finally had to drop their patreon.

The game sucks for lots of valid reasons! Like, it's got Baldur's Gate 3 syndrome BIGTIME where they clearly only had "act I" in a really polished form on release - the further you progress into the game the rougher things get and the more rushed it feels. And the performance really is bad - when you're in combat it doesn't really look better than the PS4 one just cause the spell effects are so weird and blurred and pixelly looking and the framerate's bad. I dunno. I think this could be as good as the first if they release a Dark Arisen style endgame for it. But the current state of it is really disappointing. A new big problem I've discovered today is that they neutered Mages/Sorcerers - you can only have FOUR spells on you at once (unlike 8 in the previous game) and you can only switch out spell loadouts at bonfires or vocation trainers, so you're stuck with an incredibly limited toolkit at all times. Ex, do you want your damage spell to be lightning, ice, or fire? Do you want your buff spell to be lightning, ice, or fire? What about utility spells? In the last game you could actually be prepared to deal with more than like two enemy types at any given time - not the case now.

Before release, the creator of the game was saying he liked the "travelling" in the game, and i guess that really shows in both games, for better or for worse. I liked that too for a time in the first game, but i'm always the magic class, and calling down the same 2 or 3 offensive spells (because prepared spell numbers are so limited) got really old for me. And i was forced into it for extended periods because travelling can be almost one huge extended battle sometimes. The seemingly arbitrary limits on prepared skills/spells pissed me off as well

 

[wankerness]

Before release, the creator of the game was saying he liked the "travelling" in the game, and i guess that really shows in both games, for better or for worse. I liked that too for a time in the first game, but i'm always the magic class, and calling down the same 2 or 3 offensive spells (because prepared spell numbers are so limited) got really old for me. And i was forced into it for extended periods because travelling can be almost one huge extended battle sometimes. Does the second one still have seemingly arbitrary limits on prepared skills/spells as well? No way to increase them?

I THINK you're referring to what I said in the last paragraph - you can only have 4 spells equipped in this game, while in the previous game you could have 6 (I was remembering it as 8 - guess it was only 6). This holds true across all classes. I think other classes had more limited numbers of abilities they could equip than mages/sorcs did in 1, so they might not feel it as much. But yeah, it's annoying since most games these days have a dual-loadout thing where holding down one button gives you four skills on the four face buttons, and holding down a different button switches them to four others. This seems like something that might get added in an expansion. But right now it feels really suffocating. Even on the archer and fighter I felt like I couldn't equip anything. Fighter especially - you have like 4 different defensive skills that do no damage, that taunt move to get enemies off your party members, and then ALL of your offensive abilities besides autoattack all vying for those four slots.

The "balance" is that some moves got shifted to other buttons/types of abilities. Ex, a mage doesn't have to choose Anodyne (heal) for one of those four spells, it's their "class ability" and is always there.

I think passives are the same as DD1, you can equip out of all passives you've learned from every vocation, I think there are 8 slots and you learn 5 per class and they're total free for all in terms of you can equip any one from any class.

 

[Werecow]

I THINK you're referring to what I said in the last paragraph - you can only have 4 spells equipped in this game, while in the previous game you could have 6 (I was remembering it as 8 - guess it was only 6). This holds true across all classes. I think other classes had more limited numbers of abilities they could equip than mages/sorcs did in 1, so they might not feel it as much. But yeah, it's annoying since most games these days have a dual-loadout thing where holding down one button gives you four skills on the four face buttons, and holding down a different button switches them to four others. This seems like something that might get added in an expansion. But right now it feels really suffocating. Even on the archer and fighter I felt like I couldn't equip anything. Fighter especially - you have like 4 different defensive skills that do no damage, that taunt move to get enemies off your party members, and then ALL of your offensive abilities besides autoattack all vying for those four slots.

The "balance" is that some moves got shifted to other buttons/types of abilities. Ex, a mage doesn't have to choose Anodyne (heal) for one of those four spells, it's their "class ability" and is always there.

I think passives are the same as DD1, you can equip out of all passives you've learned from every vocation, I think there are 8 slots and you learn 5 per class and they're total free for all in terms of you can equip any one from any class.

Yeh, i got interrupted and distracted. Edited it after seeing your last part.

Even less spells than the first game would REALLY annoy me.