The Miscellaneous PC & vidya Games Thread

[Habbaku]

I quite enjoyed the choice-making and story of The Banner Saga, but if I ever play another game with that style of tactical combat gameplay, it'll be too soon.

[Josquius]

Yeah. Banner saga is good.
I think on the 3rd I cheated and save game edited to get the guy in the north in the right place. Think I kept him South in the 2nd as otherwise he'd just dissappear never to be seen again, seemed a unnecessary death sentence.

[Syt]

I've been giving Elder Scrolls Online another try. It's been my third and probably my last.

Now, the game does a few cool things for an MMO. While you quest in a shared world, quest NPCs are often instanced. What does that mean? E.g. you come across a quest giver in the wilderness who tells you to do stuff and meet them elsewhere afterwards. When you progress the quest, the NPC will despawn for you in their original spot and appear in a new location where you then turn in the quest/progress the story. This seems minor, but it reduces backtracking significantly, and improves immersion - no longer will an NPC you "rescued" still show up for you in their original spawn point waiting for other players.

This can also stretch to enemies - e.g. one quest to purge Ayleid ruins from an evil spell turned all mobs in the area neutral, giving you time to explore the area in peace.

All quests are voiced, and some give you options as to how you want to end the quest (usually two, boiling down to "Help A" and "Help B"). Most quest givers also offer background dialogue.

The middling: crafting is the least painful I've come across in an MMO. You don't need special equipment, or tools to gather ingredients and craft.

The skills are based on skill lines. Some are from your class, but others come from using weapons, crafting, doing guild quests, etc. It's not a bad idea on paper - having e.g. a bow skill equipped on your active combat bar will level up bow skills and unlock more skills in that line that you can buy with points you get on level up. Some are active skills, some passive skills.

The downside to this is that as a newbie you can quickly become inundated with skill lines and unsure how to level effectively. I guess it's not much of a problem for solo content, but the game now has "skill advisors" which has a few build suggestions for each class (usually focused on heal, dps, or tank) and then suggest skills to buy on level up for that choice. Overall opinion seems to be that these are great for beginners who have no idea what they do and get them through the campaign, but not optimized for end game content.

Exploration - the game puts a lot of content in the world: there's lore books to find in each map, skyshards to discover (3 shards give one skill point - if you've completed them in one area you can unlock them for all characters ... for a fee), delves (mini dungeons that have a miniboss to kill and sometimes give special loot or side quests), geographic locations, world bosses, locked chests, etc. E.g. the Elven post-tutorial area looks like this:



While cool in theory, it becomes a bit tedious, because the map is quite well filled with mobs that are trivial to take out but become quite tedious to clear out every time you go looking for some treasure or hidden crafting shrine for special gear or clear a map marker (finished ones are white on black, unfinished ones black on white). Delves are the worst IMHO, as you can find lore books (which you can't pick up), but chances are half way through reading it a mob will have respawned (after having been killed by one of several players in the dungeon with you at the same time) and attack you. Delves, esp. would benefit a lot from being instanced and not respawning enemies.

Combat feels extremely boring. It tries to break the MMO mold a bit by not having lock on targeting. Instead you will have to aim at your opponent(s) which can be difficult for melee characters at times. It adds a blocking and disrupt mechanic and is set up to weave regular attacks (light and heavy) in between your active skills.

However, you only get 5 regular and 1 ultimate skill on your skill bar (plus block, light attack, heavy attack which are on mouse buttons). You can double this with weapon swaps. Each "combat skill line" has 5 attacks + ultimate, so you will have to choose very carefully from your 3 class lines and weapon lines (bow, 2H weapons, dual wield, staff, sword & shield, ...) as to what you put on your action bar. Some skills can later be "morphed" into stronger versions, but generally you will stick with a very repetitive rotation once you settle on some skills.

Additionally, you can invest points in stamina/health/magicka every time you level up. However, there's no real choice here: if you use stamina attacks, put all points in stamina. If you use magicka attacks, put all points into magicka. Also, make sure all your skills use only one or the other (I guess in solo world content it doesn't matter much, but it will not be optimized in later game). My understanding is that they simplified this a lot from original launch, having different resistances for physical and magical damage and all that, but ... yeah.

Not a fan of the classes in this game, but that's due to personal preference. I prefer playing tanky or nimble melee characters with little to no magic use. However, all classes are built around some spell usage. Dragon Knights get fire/earth spells, Wardens are basically druids with nature magic, etc. The closest to my normal play style is the Nightblade which focuses on close range attacks but still throws in a bunch of spells. While theoretically you could ignore your class skills and just go with weapon/armor skills, it doesn't feel like an optimized build at all.

Monetization seems reasonable to me. You get free access to the base game for free. You can purchase DLC quests and expansions. You will be very limited on storage space, though. A monthly sub will unlock all content and give you unlimited crafting inventory plus more 10% XP and more gold etc., plus a monthly allowance of "Crowns" which you can spend at the in game store - mostly on cosmetics and collectibles but also on potions etc. You get a daily reward for logging in (usually potions of some sort, but for long streaks towards the end of the month you might get currency etc. I played with sub and didn't mind for the amount I played it.

TL; DR: ESO has some interesting ideas; I like the quests and exploration, and some locations make me nostalgic, but the actual mechanics (combat & skill systems) are a major turn off.

[Syt]

I also got hooked on picross/nonograms. Nonograms are puzzles that give you a grid and tell you how many cells are filled in on each line. E.g. it might say "1  2  7", which means from left to right there's 1 single cell, 2 connected cells, and 7 connected cells to be filled in.

Looks like this:



Great for solving while watching something.

I recently finished Paint it Back on Steam. Cost 8 Euros, and took me over 70 hours to finish (some puzzles were significantly harder than others for me, and I tackled them at hardest difficulty).

The "2016 Election" bonus round, though ... not sure I needed that in my life.

[Maladict]

 

I caved and bought Nimby Rails. This could be an epic time sink.

[Grey Fox]

Thanks Syt for the ESCO impressions.

Have you played Picross?

[frunk]

Been playing Portal Reloaded.  Pretty fun fan mod, that's free on Steam if you own Portal 2.

It adds a third "time" portal.

[Syt]

Thanks Syt for the ESCO impressions.

Have you played Picross?

No worries; take my comments on ESO with a grain of salt; there seem to be a lot of people enjoying the content as is. It is very much a YMMV case, I guess.

I've not played any of the Nintendo Picross games; Paint it Back was my first to see if I would like them, and it turns out I do. I've picked up Pictopix on Steam now which I slowly plink away at a little bit here and there.

EDIT: I see the Wikipedia page for Nonograms has a list of solving techniques:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonogram

I'm kind of glad I figured them all out myself, though it's not exactly rocket science.

[Jacob]

I've been playing some Pikmin 3 recently. Mostly because my boy really wanted it, and it has co-op. I'm not particularly good at the game and find it kind of annoying. It's cute though.

I got Disco Elysium, but haven't gotten into it. Cool soundtrack though.

I gave CKIII another go and finally got into it for a bit. Then my ruler went from 0 stress to dead from stress in under 5 minutes of gameplay during a big war (I guess a selection of relatives died in battle) at the same time as a large army of (previously) reliable allies decided not to pile into the big battle that would've wiped out the already once defeated big enemy stack that could've ended the big war. That annoyed me enough that I put the game away again.

I got vortex up on my PC and it looks like another Skyrim run is coming up.

Played some Warhammer Total War a little while ago. The Total War series frequently draws me in with its promise, but typically disappoints after a while.

[Valmy]

My kids had me play through Pikmin 3 multiple times 

Nothing like playing some weird action game with two preschoolers back seat driving you the whole time.

[garbon]

I've just seen for the first time that rps has articles where you need to be a subscriber to view more than a preview.

[Syt]

I've just seen for the first time that rps has articles where you need to be a subscriber to view more than a preview.

They've had those for ages, but previously they were hidden for a while, and later released to the website for everyone.

[garbon]

Got it, yeah I figured couldn't be something new. Also, I love how the articles didn't from topic, seem all that worth paying for.

[Syt]

Agreed. I've been subbed before to support them, not for the benefits.

[Syt]

Expeditions is getting a 3rd instalment after Conquistadores and Vikings. In Rome you will lead a Roman legion in the late republic. The preview sounds quite excellent:

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/expeditions-rome-preview