The Miscellaneous PC & vidya Games Thread

[Josquius]

Been hearing a lot of buzz about Diablo immortal.

Sounds really disgusting.

Basically a gatcha game, but they hide their loot boxes behind a dungeon you're paying to enter thus they get to skirt all the laws about needing to be transparent with odds.

Never really been into Diablo, but this just boils my piss. So many of my hate boxes ticked.

[crazy canuck]

Yeah, lots of criticism.  I have not played a blizz game for a number of years. And don't see any reason for that to change.

[FunkMonk]

I played it and it's fine for a mobile game but nothing special. And it is especially shit because of the loot box aspect.

I still play modded Diablo 2 sometimes. New season of Project Diablo 2 just started.

[Syt]

Well, I finished Final Fantasy 1 Pixel Remaster. I admit after the second crystal I used a walkthrough to figure out where to go next, because I scoured the world and couldn't figure out where to go. Didn't expect that an area I had visited a few times before would NOW have the entrance to the next dungeon.

The very basic narrative hasn't aged very well, but I'd rate it fine for an 8 bit game (then again, Ultima VI was still released on C64, and so were the Gold Box/Silver Box SSI AD&D games - though of course the hardware/memory/media capabilities were different).

The turn based combat is similar to old classics like Wizardry or Bard's Tale, where you select your actions and then have them resolved by the game - except unlike the earlier titles it adds sprites and animations, making it immediately more engaging. Not sure if this was the first time this kind of turn based party combat was used in a JRPG, but it's been the standard for a very long time after (with some variations, like Chrono Trigger's combo system that also modified the turn based combat into what's basically a cooldown timer system).

While the plot has not much replayability, the gameplay itself does, if you want - mainly by trying to play the game with different party setups, or trying to beat it with a party of one.

I admit I was quite tired by the ceaseless random encounters by the end. I wanted to get the 100% bestiary achievement, but after two hours of trying to get the Warmech to spawn (a look at the Steam forums indicate that it's a very rare spawn in the Sky Fortress) I gave up on that. Also, the sea encounters while you're on your ship become a terrible nuisance until you get the airship. You outlevel them quite quickly, but it's some time till you get the airship and don't have to bother anymore.

I don't have an immediate inkling to re-play it, but I'm tempted to load up the NES ROM at some point, just to compare how much grindier the original game was.

The soundtrack remains excellent, though.

[FunkMonk]

Syt, have you played Octopath Traveler? Its combat system is interesting and is the main draw of the game.

[Syt]

I have it (and many other games ) in my account. Not quite sure what I'll play next yet.

[celedhring]

I played it, the combat system was fun but everything else surrounding it wasn't too engaging.

[Syt]

Further up somewhere I mentioned that I thought the beer & pretzels Strategic Command series would be great for a 1985 NATO vs WP game, but I guess they have different plans.

(There's a Red Storm 1985 mod in the works for War in Europe, though: https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=10653&t=376645 )

(Also, just to clarify: those are two different videos I've linked )

[Syt]

Ok, so I started Final Fantasy II Pixel Remaster. It's ... immediately a lot more involved. There's a proper opening "cutscene", the gfx are a bit more detailed compared to the predecessor, and, at least in the early stages, there's a plot for the player to follow. There's more dialogue, and a keyword system to ask characters about topics.

Instead of the previous game's XP and leveling system (with randomized skill gains), you gain e.g. sword skills by using a sword in combat. You can dual wield weapons and forgo a shield. Instead of a fixed number of spells per level you get mana points. I honestly didn't expect such drastic changes already in game #2 which came out only 1 year later, in 1988.

First time the battle music hit, though, transported me back to FF14, because it also shows up in that game in some cases.

The NES original:

The full orchestral version for the Pixel Remaster:

And the FF14 version which, around the 0:20 mark, turns into a jazzier interpretation that wouldn't be completely out of place in Cowboy Bebop.

(There's also SNES and Playstation versions, of course.)

[Josquius]

What do these pixel remasters add vs other earlier remakes that makes them worth the hefty price tag?

[frunk]

I've gotten back into Kerbal Space Program, and I have to say adding an Alarm Clock in the game has made such a difference.  I can do more in a shorter period of time without having to babysit various missions.  Launch, set an alarm, revisit when the alarm goes off.

Right now I have 6 or so different ships that I'm actively monitoring and it's not a burden at all.  It used to be tricky to juggle two at the same time.

[Syt]

What do these pixel remasters add vs other earlier remakes that makes them worth the hefty price tag?

Dunno. I guess they add convenience functions (quick save anywhere, maps so it's hard to get lost in dungeons), and an overall SNES style look, plus orchestral soundtrack. Also, an adjusted difficulty curve to be less grindy, I guess?

For III-VI I suppose it makes it easy to play them in a way that looks more like the originals (as opposed to the 3D versions they had on mobile and later brought to PC).

[Syt]

This article has an overview of the biggest changes: https://www.thegamer.com/final-fantasy-pixel-remasters-originals-differences/

[Tamas]

How could Death Stranding go past any kind of rating agencies with the early-birth babies cut out of their brain dead mothers used as sensors hanged on your chest in a mini incubator thing to detect ghosts of the dead, and all other similar crap?

[Josquius]

I keep playing Hades, it is very good.