The Miscellaneous PC & vidya Games Thread

[Syt]

Paradox did a 3 hours "deep dive" on their channel today (having it on the background while working on something), I think it's mostly an investor PR info?

Anyways, among their various info graphics was a slide about their "success" rate on releases:


(Larger version: https://i.imgur.com/SjyRK4J.png)

There were some surprises in there for sure. For one, I had completely forgotten about Impire, Leviathan Warships and Showdown Effect.

I did not expect, though, that the Shadowrun trilogy and Pillars of Eternity "only" broke even. I would those titles to have a better return on investment than Leviathan Warships (though I guess respective budget per title played a role ... then again, IIRC PDX only did the distribution for Pillars?).

Only about 20 minutes into the actual presentation (20+ minutes of music at the start ... ), but it's been mentioned a few times now that they're very happy with the AoW4 launch

[Oexmelin]

It's too bad that Tyranny did well, but not well enough to continue along that vein (and Paradox disengaged from RPGs following that, and PoE's collaboration). It was, for once, an original setting for a RPG.

I think PoE did okay, but did not grow any sort of market. It appealed to people who grew up with Baldur's Gate, and those are the people who bought it. From what I have read, some of the developpers did not really enjoy working on that (they felt trapped by nostalgia's expectations) and the collab. with Paradox did not go well either.

[Syt]

Warhammer 40k (retro) shooter, inspired by 90s classics out on Steam. 95% out of 2499 reviews positive.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2005010/Warhammer_40000_Boltgun/

Launch trailer:

[Josquius]

I know I wouldn't enjoy that but it still excites me.

[Zanza]

An article on the Paradox info Syt mentions above:

https://gameworldobserver.com/2023/05/23/paradox-interactive-hit-games-kill-rate-growth-strategy

One of their "endless" games, Cities Skylines, is being replaced soon, no?

[Josquius]

An article on the Paradox info Syt mentions above:

https://gameworldobserver.com/2023/05/23/paradox-interactive-hit-games-kill-rate-growth-strategy

One of their "endless" games, Cities Skylines, is being replaced soon, no?

Wow. Half the games cancelled another released. Colour me intruiged

[Syt]

Was playing a bit of Fabled Lands a bit yesterday. It's based on an old game books series, similar to Fighting Fantasy, Lone Wolf etc. It's basically trying to be an open world game with a game book feel.

I'd say it achives that, esp. in terms of difficulty. As in game books, taking a wrong turn can lead to a sudden and unforewarned "rocks fall, you die" moment. The world map is quite gorgeous, and you move node to node. In towns you have multiple activities/maintenance things (selling/buying stuff, accessing your stash, finding quests), and most "travel nodes" have you roll dice for random encounters. The game has tons of skill rolls (as is tradition) and not too much combat - and it can be tough to get into an encounter you're underleveled for. The game has many options to strip you of money and gear (so having a "second suit" in stash is a good idea).

That said, I play in "normal" difficulty, which lets you save/reload, which is essentially the same as putting your finger into the book to remember where you made a choice so you can go back if it goes bad.

Once you figure out the mechanics the game becomes a bit easier. However, after exploring the various map areas a bit it also becomes a bit dull and tedious. There's no real fast travel, so if you want to go from A to B you have to travel through the connecting nodes (and pick the path that is safest/has best encounter tables for you), and that can become quite annoying if you travel back and forth between some areas a bit. It would be more tolerable if you could speed up dice rolls/animations a bit, I guess. Unfortunately, some of the gameplay also becomes not organically running into new things, but rather coming a cross a quest location, seeing a greyed out option, and then filing that away till you have the appropriate quest. Some locations have repeatable scripted encounters which is also a bit dull. There was one "big" story moment where I could choose to pick sides, but otherwise your agency is limited to a few options in each encounter, usually leading into skill checks.

Leveling happens not through grinding experience, but when finishing milestone quests. I was Rank 1 for a long time, and then rose to 5 in a short timeframe while going through some harder/more elaborate quests in a row. Many quests offer stat boosts and new skills outside of the "normal" leveling system, though.

Overall - yeah, it's a gamebook as open world all right, and while some of the encounters or discovering a new location can be interesting, overall it becomes a bit "meh" for me.

[Syt]

Also, needing a small break from AoW4. The game is fun, but as Tamas said, later in game it becomes a bit of a slog. Large late game tactical battles with both sides having all kinds of spells and buffs can be fun, but also fairly tedious, so I often find myself using autoresolve. Actually, when playing a quick "casual" map, I might use auto combat even from the start. Kind of stuck on the final story map. Still trying to figure out the optimal approach. My first attempt I bankrupted myself - at the start of the scenario you can pick a buff for the duration of the scenario. I thought summoning some units every few turns would be great, but didn't account for their upkeep. Oops. Second try, I did better (using the buff that nukes an enemy province every three turns), but was too agressive too soon and ended up losing too many troops and having my main "exploration" stack of my ruler and two aux armies by a group of leaderless stacks of the Big Bad(TM) who gets a bug tech/resource advantage in the scenario.

[Solmyr]

Last campaign scenario is apparently easiest to win if you start underground and go for a magic victory. That way, the AI enemies will mostly leave you alone.

[Syt]

Last campaign scenario is apparently easiest to win if you start underground and go for a magic victory. That way, the AI enemies will mostly leave you alone.

Thanks for the tip, that worked. Went underground, and stayed there for the entire game. Even got the achievement that all my team mates survived. Cheesy? Hell yeah. But I'm not above cheese when it comes to beating some parts of games.

[Oexmelin]

Was playing a bit of Fabled Lands a bit yesterday. It's based on an old game books series, similar to Fighting Fantasy, Lone Wolf etc. It's basically trying to be an open world game with a game book feel.

One of the authors, Dave Morris, was also the author of a TTRPG, the poorly named Dragon Warriors, which was translated into French. I borrowed those books at the library as a kid, and it became my first encounter with TTRPGS. It made quite an impression on me: Morris was, IIRC, a history grad from Oxford, and his world, and game, felt truly grounded in historical myths and folklore. So much so that I never was able to get into D&D, which always felt to me much too cartoonish, too TV-like? Still, it never got much success (apart, weirdly, in Australia, apparently). Yet, my group and I clung to it - mostly because its "spirit" (narrative trumps rules, atmosphere rather than math) appealed to us (and because my attempts at finding a D&D group always ended poorly).

Anyways, over the years, he informally refined his rules, which he released here and there as pdf - and here we are, my friends and I, still using that really old, somewhat clunky, hodgepodge of a system. It's been almost thirty years.

The illustrator of the orignal books, Russ Nicholson (who also contributed many illustrations to the Fighting Fantasy series) died a few days ago.

[Syt]

Thanks for sharing, Oex.

Fabled Lands is also a bit more grounded. The main race is humans (with a few more phantastical races strewn here and there), and a focus on folklore. The game adapts 4 or 5 out of the 7 released Fabled Lands books quite faithfully from what I read (the books didn't have a major quest throughline, but rather let you follow your on whims, and you could move from one geographic area (book) to another and back again. I guess my main complaint is a lack of more quality of life features. The world itself is quite interesting in its lore.

[Syt]

Been playing about 12 hours of Divinity: Original Sin (Enhanced Edition) which has been sitting in my account for yonks.

I'm a bit torn on it. Of the previous games, I only played Divine Divinity and despite some quirks enjoyed it a lot - and D:OS seems very much a continuation of the original game's tradition (unlike D2: Ego Draconis or Dragon Commander), with many recognizable elements (moving objects, teleport pyramids ... ).

Larian's brand of humor and "funny dialogue" won't be to everyone's liking ("Call me Ishmashell" to name but one ) but I'm ok with it. I've been watching Escapist's very (VERY) silly "Adventure is Nigh" D&D campaign, and D:OS is MUCH more serious than that.

I guess my issue is with pacing, but that may be my fault. I've been exploring every nook and cranny of Cyseal, trying to solve as many quests before leaving town to the monster infested surroundings. But that led to a serious pacing issue, because for the past 10 or so hours I've been mostly talking to NPCs, gaming the sneak system (once you have a party of 4 it becomes a bit trivial to break into "forbidden" areas by engaging multiple characters in conversations to have them look away with one party member doing the breaking/entering unmolested), and only really running into combat when I dug up the entire cemetery (though I still have to explore under the General Store).

It's ovrall enjoyable, but running to/fro in town and investigating the (entertaining) murder mystery is starting to wear on me (and the whole crafting bit is maybe a bit much). I will give it more time, esp. to see what it looks like "outside of town" before giving up, though.

(I play on Classic difficulty, for the record.)

[The Brain]

I had a lot of fun playing that game.

[Syt]

Diablo IV and Street Fighter VI have come out, and both seem to be ... good?

Not really interested in either game at the moment, but it feels unusual that games in franchises come out and don't seem broken, incomplete, unfinished (though there is of course the inevitable monetization ... ).