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Blade
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Post by Blade »

Currently playing Alpha Protocol, and this game is just fantastic. Far less bugs/technical problems than I was expecting, great storytelling, nice writing, supportive of my playstyle... I'm often reminded of Deus Ex:HR, but I find it better executed (except for the responsiveness of the interface, and the boss fights are about as bad.)
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Longes
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Post by Longes »

Blade wrote:Currently playing Alpha Protocol, and this game is just fantastic. Far less bugs/technical problems than I was expecting, great storytelling, nice writing, supportive of my playstyle... I'm often reminded of Deus Ex:HR, but I find it better executed (except for the responsiveness of the interface, and the boss fights are about as bad.)
Alpha Protocol is one of the few games I've played multiple times.
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Post by radthemad4 »

Alpha Protocol is horribly underrated. I only got it due to this article.
Shamus Young wrote:Bethesda has focused on making great big sandbox worlds where you are free to make a lot of choices that don't matter. You can kill Bob or help Bob, but in the end all that will change is that Bob either will or won't be around later. Which doesn't matter because Bob won't have anything interesting to say if you let him live. His brother won't hunt you down for revenge if you kill him. Bob won't come to your rescue later if you help him. Bob's family won't starve if you take him out. There are a few exceptions here and there, but for the most part your choices are made in isolation and don't propagate to the rest of the world and often don't even make it to the other side of the room.

BioWare takes a different approach and seems to offer you more meaningful freedom, although once you're wise to their tricks (or you replay the game again later) you can see that a lot of your choices were illusions. They also offer a lot of different dialog choices that express different views but all ultimately lead to the same conclusion at the end of the conversation. I'm really strongly in favor of this sort of thing (a big part of roleplaying is being able to play your character) but we shouldn't confuse this sort of thing with real freedom. Like choosing how your character looks, it's a purely cosmetic choice with no in-game repercussions.

But Obsidian is taking another approach entirely, and for me it's really paying off. Unlike Fallout 3 or Oblivion, you can't choose to be a bad guy. Unlike Dragon Age and Mass Effect, you can't always say exactly what you want or noodle around in a dialog tree to your heart's content. But what the game does give you is fun and meaningful choices. These choices do propagate to the rest of the world and they do matter.

If you're used to playing a renegade type of character you might be in for a shock when mouthing off to powerful people and sucker-punching jerks comes back to haunt you later. If your playstyle leans towards the paladin end of the spectrum, then you might learn a little lesson in pragmatism when sparing the life of an enemy means they might come back to give you a wedgie in a subsequent mission. Some choices are clear, and others aren't, but after the first few decisions you'll come to appreciate being able to change the game in meaningful ways. Sometimes a choice can turn a boss fight into a conversation. Or save the life of an ally. None of the decisions follow the cheap formula of "do you want the money and the bad karma or do your want to make some trivial sacrifice as a down payment on your halo?"

Another nice touch is that they've done away with the generic good / evil slider. Instead of putting all of your actions onto some sort of universe-wide karma scale, you simply earn or lose favor with the various individuals you meet. Instead of the game passing judgement on you and calling you a jerk, it's telling you that the person you're talking to thinks you're jerk. You can't punch Bob in the face but then go and rescue ten kittens to make Bob magically your best friend. If you want Bob to like you then you have to do things Bob likes and he has to have some way of knowing about it. It's elegant, it leads to less metagaming, and it just makes sense.

Alpha Protocol is getting a bad rap for dated graphics, slow first act, and its bug collection. While it deserves to take a few lumps for buggy gameplay, I'd really hate for that to be what people remember about it. Lionhead, BioWare, and Bethesda are always selling their games on the "choices have consequences" idea, but that often ends up being more talk than anything else. But Obsidian has actually delivered on that promise and given us a game that almost demands repeated playthroughs. I'm really hoping they make an Alpha Protocol 2.

Although I hope they make a patch for Alpha Protocol 1 first.
The pistol's chain shot ability is pure awesomesauce but I was pleasantly surprised to find a melee build (i.e. maxing martial arts and endurance) is actually quite viable and fun.

I kinda wish your conversation options were clearer and that they didn't actually have the limited time to pick an option in conversation mechanic.
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Post by RelentlessImp »

So I finally picked up Assassin's Creed Unity despite people saying it's a terrible game. I played Black Flag and Rogue and I was extremely fucking tired of the sailing games that I never enjoyed in the first place, so I was excited to get back to a large city to run around in and the city being the focus (for the same reason, I'm looking forward to Syndicate).

I'm about two hours into it, and I just want to say... I really fucking love Arno's movement while running, jumping and climbing - especially when he's jumping from a high place to a low place and draws his legs in and his arms go back. It mirrors actual parkour techniques, and feels fluid and graceful. His dives off tall buildings/viewpoints are beautiful to watch, too. Okay, I've run into a few bugs here and there, and a few frustrations with the free-run system where it doesn't recognize that yes, you can go up, quit wiggling on the handhold and MOVE goddamnit, but I am thoroughly enjoying myself in a way that Black Flag and Rogue didn't fulfill.

In addition, fuck people that say that the game is somehow worse for not including the terrible fucking sailing. Why is it that we bag on Bethesda games for having large tracts of empty spaces nothing is in but Black Flag and Rogue somehow got a pass on it? At least most of Paris has content, the vast majority of the sailing shit in Black Flag and Rogue were just ports with fucking collectibles. Fuck that shit.

The changes to the movement system feel a little clunky until you get used to them, though, and removing counter kills in favor of perfect parries was an interesting if initially frustrating design choice. But really, it just means you get to kill people on your own terms rather than watching 5-7 second counter assassination cutscenes over and over (Shay fucking pissed me off with how often that happens because all of his are so goddamned boring and violent for the sake of being violent).

So yeah, Unity is probably my second-favorite game in the series now, right after the first AC game (which I unabashedly love for its cities), with AC2 falling just behind it if only because the combat feels more visceral without the counter-kills that might as well have been QTEs. I just wish I hadn't let negative reviews and residual bad feeling from AC3 push me off of it for so long.
Last edited by RelentlessImp on Tue Jun 09, 2015 8:42 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Blicero »

I picked up Wolfenstein: The New Order on a recent Steam sale. It's an interesting take on the manshooter that mixes the approach of a modern game like CoD and retro FPSs like Painkiller or Shadow Warrior. Character movement speeds are a lot slower than they are in retro shooters like Painkiller or Serious Sam, so circle strafing and the like are kind of difficult. But health totals and weapon styles are a lot closer to the retro school. Level design is basically linear, but there are enough twists and side passages and the like to make it not feel like you are just repeatedly walking down a corridor. You can play some sections like a stealth game, albeit a very shallow one. Enemies are pretty unobservant and don't even notice their buddy's bodies or whatever. Once you get spotted, you really can't hide again, so it doesn't allow for organic switches between stealth and action modes the way Crysis or Far Cry does.

Also, the story and characters are surprisingly well-done for a manshooter; the cutscene cinematography is probably the best I have seen in a game. Not bad overall.
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Hiram McDaniels
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Post by Hiram McDaniels »

I'm a ridiculous video game ludite. I only bought a PS3 a year after the PS4 came out and I use it mostly for downloading and playing PS1 games.

I did however pick up Mass Effect, which I like a lot. But I noticed that in the narrative of the game I'm supposed to be the most elite commando space badass in the galaxy or some shit, but because I'm bad at video games, in actual play I just run around in circles, firing in a blind panic while my much more capable NPC cohorts kill everything for me. Then when I get back to HQ they're like: "You did a good thing out there Shepard", and I'm like: "Yeah yeah. XP please. And fuck you for not being Chrono Trigger."

So I've decided that Mass Effect is ACTUALLY about a bumbling incompetent who's always stealing credit for the accomplishments of his peers, and manages to lummox his way through adventures in space.

I've also played Alpha Protocol because I saw it at the store for like 5 bucks. It was fun up until I got to the first of those fucking hacking minigame that you can't skip or circumvent, and then I was all: "Oh you can fuck right off Alpha Protocol".
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Post by Shady314 »

You mean the tutorial hacking 5 minutes into the game?
I think the tutorial does a piss poor job explaining whats happening.
It took me about 10 tries to figure out the matching first time I played.

This was on PC where the controls are horrendous. The mouse does NOT work. Why are you scrolling up when I go down fuck you!!! Now when I replay with a game controller I have no problem. Of course the lockpicking is easier with keyboard+mouse!

What I learned while playing was that sabotage/stealth/pistol is easy mode.
If you ever go back to it put one point in sabotage and fill every item slot with emp grenades. All the items besides emp grenades are easily ignored. That plus stealth lets you blow through all forms of security. Yes you can emp non-electronic locks. There's really not that much worth spending money (when stealthing) on so its easy to keep yourself swimming in grenades. You still have to get through the tutorial computer though. But it's worth it.
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Post by MGuy »

Played Dark Souls for the first time last week. It was a pretty good experience. I like how I had to actually quickly think my way out of my first big encounter and was rewarded for it. Sadly after that, when I get to the mainland my options seem pretty limited as far as what clever little tricks I can pull off. This game DOES NOT hold your hand and after some nifty exploration I find that each time I can get a little bit further before something new pops up and completely kills me.

Now I've played Bloodbourne (which a friend had because I don't have a PS 4). In the small amount of time I played I couldn't make it to the first boss. It was a breathtakingly diffeent experience where all the things I'd been forced to learn in Dark Souls were largely gotten rid of. The approach I had to take to fighting things was considerably different. I liked both though I enjoyed BB's playstyle more. If I had a PS4 I'd buy it.
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Post by radthemad4 »

So I found out that there's a pretty good PSP emulator for android. I was initially torn between starting Final Fantasy Tactics and Tactics Ogre, but then I found Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness and realized I was more in the mood for something light hearted and silly.

Holy shit, this game is awesome!

You can lift and throw both allies and enemies to reposition them on the battlefield (you can lift and throw in a single turn, but you can't also attack, use special abilities or spells with that same character that turn). You can't throw people into bottomless pits though. You can lift someone who's lifting someone else and so on, then chain throw them to get a unit across a map in a single turn. Any humanoid character can lift without limit, but some classes can throw further than others. Weirdly enough, if you throw enemies at other enemies the weaker enemy disappears and the stronger enemy (or boss character) levels up. This is sometimes useful though as you can focus on damaging just one enemy and the enemy team gets fewer actions per turn. Also, during the boss fight against Flonne, if you throw the dragon at her, it levels her up a lot, but she doesn't do anything other than healing her allies which makes that battle trivial.

You unlock special abilities (i.e. stuff other than hit adjacent person) pretty quickly (even if some of these are 'hit adjacent person multiple times and/or harder than usual). If someone attacks with allies adjacent (vertically or horizontally, not diagonally) to them, there's a chance of pulling off 'team attacks' where multiple people attack together (max 4). One thing that's kinda weird, but a lot of fun to use is that you can 'undo' a unit's movement as long as its old position is unoccupied. This lets you do things like move an ally away to protect them from another's AoE attack and then 'undo' that character's move action after the aoe attack so they're back there. They can then be moved adjacent to another ally who's about to hit someone so they can help out with a team attack and then 'undo' that too. You can also undo lifts (but not throws).

Possibly my favorite part of the game is that is there is no permadeath so I can play ridiculously recklessly and let half (occasionally most and sometimes almost all) of my team get destroyed in battle and not give a shit as I'll have them back before the next map.

This is I think the most fun I've had with a turn based tactics game (granted, I haven't played many of those other than Tactics Ogre: Knight of Lodis (GBA), Final Fantasy Tactics Advance (GBA), Final Fantasy Tactics A2 (DS) and Temple of Elemental Evil )

Also, the story is hilarious, the graphics are nice and the animations for special attacks and team attacks are hella sweet (though I'll admit I sometimes fast forward through them using the emulator after I've already seen them a few times).


Stuff that bugs me:
- I wish diagonal throwing didn't require timing a button press as you can't undo a throw if you get it wrong, but it's not that big a deal when your emulator has quicksave. Also, a lot of the special moves should totally be doable diagonally but aren't
- There are some levels with narrow areas, crowded (with props) and with a lot of minor elevation variations which are usually annoying as the required positioning is kinda finicky for a lot of special moves
- The required positioning is kinda finicky for a lot of special moves
- Weapons other than the sword don't seem to have decent area effect abilities (at least early on) but at least fists can reposition enemies which is kinda neat
- Stealing items has a percentage chance of working and I haven't yet figured out how to reset the seed for quicksave shenanigans (sometimes just quickloading and pressing up/down a few times seems to work, but if so those percentages are fucking lies, e.g. 40% chance requiring 10 attempts (or my luck is just that bad) )
Last edited by radthemad4 on Sat Apr 30, 2016 9:01 am, edited 5 times in total.
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Longes
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Post by Longes »

I never managed to get into Disgaea. The grinding, silly story and strange combat systems put me off.
radthemad4
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Post by radthemad4 »

IMO, the grinding's not too bad. The game has levels where you can get level up pretty quickly and matches don't take very long. The game does seem to expect you to grind based on the levels of the enemies you face. Yes, it is extremely silly, but I like silliness sometimes. I really like the combat system though, except for the extreme finickiness of positioning for special abilities and the lack of diagonal support. The AI never seems to use move canceling and/or throwing though.
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Post by Leress »

radthemad4 wrote:

Stuff that bugs me:
- I wish diagonal throwing didn't require timing a button press as you can't undo a throw if you get it wrong, but it's not that big a deal when your emulator has quicksave. Also, a lot of the special moves should totally be doable diagonally but aren't
That doesn't really get addressed until Disgaea D2
- There are some levels with narrow areas, crowded (with props) and with a lot of minor elevation variations which are usually annoying as the required positioning is kinda finicky for a lot of special moves
- The required positioning is kinda finicky for a lot of special moves
- Weapons other than the sword don't seem to have decent area effect abilities (at least early on) but at least fists can reposition enemies which is kinda neat
That isn't really been fixed either, they did get rid of some of the worst abilities. *Looks at Ranger's Turret ability*
- Stealing items has a percentage chance of working and I haven't yet figured out how to reset the seed for quicksave shenanigans (sometimes just quickloading and pressing up/down a few times seems to work, but if so those percentages are fucking lies, e.g. 40% chance requiring 10 attempts (or my luck is just that bad) )
99% it's not even worth stealing in the games.
I only stole when testing it out, and getting weapons for vanity reasons like the light sabres.

I also didn't have much trouble getting levels and this was someone that didn't do the grinding tricks in the game.
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Post by maglag »

radthemad4 wrote: You can lift and throw both allies and enemies to reposition them on the battlefield (you can lift and throw in a single turn, but you can't also attack, use special abilities or spells with that same character that turn). You can't throw people into bottomless pits though. You can lift someone who's lifting someone else and so on, then chain throw them to get a unit across a map in a single turn. Any humanoid character can lift without limit, but some classes can throw further than others. Weirdly enough, if you throw enemies at other enemies the weaker enemy disappears and the stronger enemy (or boss character) levels up. This is sometimes useful though as you can focus on damaging just one enemy and the enemy team gets fewer actions per turn. Also, during the boss fight against Flonne, if you throw the dragon at her, it levels her up a lot, but she doesn't do anything other than healing her allies which makes that battle trivial.
You can also use the throwing NPCs one against the other to easily pass bills in the Dark Assembly.
radthemad4 wrote: Possibly my favorite part of the game is that is there is no permadeath so I can play ridiculously recklessly and let half (occasionally most and sometimes almost all) of my team get destroyed in battle and not give a shit as I'll have them back before the next map.
Hehehe, yes, sacrifice your minions recklessly, there's no lasting consequences. That's what the game wants you to think.
Enjoy your bad endings.

To get the "best" ending you need zero friendly kills.

Well if you're only letting enemies kill your minions instead of screwing up Aoe aiming then there'll be no trouble.
Last edited by maglag on Sun May 01, 2016 3:45 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Post by Meikle641 »

The Ghost in the Shell FPS is surprisingly good. I'm enjoying it a lot.
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Kaelik
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Post by Kaelik »

Meikle641 wrote:The Ghost in the Shell FPS is surprisingly good. I'm enjoying it a lot.
DO you actually get any cool powers that you don't get in other FPSes? Is hacking or remote vision or useful hud overlays or movement modes involved?

Is the Ghost in the Shell based FPS more technologically advanced than the characters in Rainbow Siege in any appreciable way?
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Post by radthemad4 »

Leress wrote:99% it's not even worth stealing in the games.
I only stole when testing it out, and getting weapons for vanity reasons like the light sabres.

I also didn't have much trouble getting levels and this was someone that didn't do the grinding tricks in the game.
Really? Stealing has gotten me some really sweet items, but then again I haven't passed any bills to upgrade the store and haven't leveled up the store much. Current stage has enemies at level 17 and a boss (Prism Red) at 20. I've got Laharl (sword + cleric spells) at level 29 (he got a lot of levels from promotion tests in the Dark Assembly), A-Team (Etna, Flonne (all the spells), Ronin, Ninja, Rogue and Scout) around 15ish and B-team (Brawler, Cleric, Priest (Cleric+) Red Mage, Green Mage, Blue Mage, Star Mage) around 10ish (mostly use them as bait, throwing and sometimes casting).

What's the deal with transmigration/reincarnation btw? I used it to turn a Brawler into a Ninja and a Warrior into a Ronin (I wanted to keep using my original incompetent recruits (beatsticks dumped int and casters dumped attack), (though they're now average) even if this required both of them to change sex) but haven't used it other than for those two yet. I kinda want to reincarnate the rogue as a higher tier scout and the scout as a higher tier rogue (so that the rogue can learn to shoot things better (Rogue has a D in Guns and Scout has an A) ). Should I transmigrate as often as I feel like? Should I use it as soon as a higher tier class (e.g. Samurai>Ronin, Bandit>Thief>Rogue, etc.) is available? As soon as a unit has enough mana to reincarnate with a positive number of attribute points? As late as possible? Something else?
maglag wrote:You can also use the throwing NPCs one against the other to easily pass bills in the Dark Assembly.
Hmm... haven't tried that. I've avoided the voting segments since I'm stingy with items and can't just beat up the senators yet.
maglag wrote:Hehehe, yes, sacrifice your minions recklessly, there's no lasting consequences. That's what the game wants you to think.
Enjoy your bad endings.

To get the "best" ending you need zero friendly kills.

Well if you're only letting enemies kill your minions instead of screwing up Aoe aiming then there'll be no trouble.
Yeah, I just let enemies kill them. I'm the kind of asshole who looks up ending details on any game with multiple endings so I was aware of that :wink:
Last edited by radthemad4 on Sun May 01, 2016 6:13 pm, edited 11 times in total.
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Post by Mechalich »

radthemad4 wrote:Really? Stealing has gotten me some really sweet items, but then again I haven't passed any bills to upgrade the store and haven't leveled up the store much. Current stage has enemies at level 17 and a boss (Prism Red) at 20. I've got Laharl (sword + cleric spells) at level 29 (he got a lot of levels from promotion tests in the Dark Assembly), A-Team (Etna, Flonne (all the spells), Ronin, Ninja, Rogue and Scout) around 15ish and B-team (Brawler, Cleric, Priest (Cleric+) Red Mage, Green Mage, Blue Mage, Star Mage) around 10ish (mostly use them as bait, throwing and sometimes casting).
Generally in Disgaea you should always upgrade the store as soon as possible. This is easier in later games because passing that bill will simply happen without any bribery required. You want to constantly maximize the weapon loadout for your primary attackers - since defense rapidly becomes pointless - to hit as hard as possible so you can maximize leveling.

Stealing is primarily a late game mechanic where it is absolutely required to get the best items in the game (various legendary weapons and accessories). In Disgaea 1 this requires the highest level thief you can acquire. In later iterations its just a matter of having a bunch of level 9999 characters and swinging with the 50% chance as needed.
radthemad4 wrote:What's the deal with transmigration/reincarnation btw? I used it to turn a Brawler into a Ninja and a Warrior into a Ronin (I wanted to keep using my original incompetent recruits (beatsticks dumped int and casters dumped attack), (though they're now average) even if this required both of them to change sex) but haven't used it other than for those two yet. I kinda want to reincarnate the rogue as a higher tier scout and the scout as a higher tier rogue (so that the rogue can learn to shoot things better (Rogue has a D in Guns and Scout has an A) ). Should I transmigrate as often as I feel like? Should I use it as soon as a higher tier class (e.g. Samurai>Ronin, Bandit>Thief>Rogue, etc.) is available? As soon as a unit has enough mana to reincarnate with a positive number of attribute points? As late as possible? Something else?
You probably want to time reincarnation to access to effective leveling maps, so you can quickly bring reincarnated characters back upwards to where they were using team attacks and other leveling tricks. In the endgame, my Disgaea 1 memories are a bit rusty, but gain in the Cave of Ordeal 3 hits diminishing returns around level 2500, so that's the point there for Baal grinding.

Disgaea 1 is vastly less grind intensive than any subsequent Disgaea games - especially with animations turned off. Its basically a matter of using Winged Slayer (or a 3x3 spell) on CoD 3 about 5000 times. In subsequent Disgaea games that was like step 1 out of 20 of endgame grinding.
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Post by Meikle641 »

Kaelik wrote:
Meikle641 wrote:The Ghost in the Shell FPS is surprisingly good. I'm enjoying it a lot.
DO you actually get any cool powers that you don't get in other FPSes? Is hacking or remote vision or useful hud overlays or movement modes involved?

Is the Ghost in the Shell based FPS more technologically advanced than the characters in Rainbow Siege in any appreciable way?
I only have minimal experience with CoD and the like. Nothing all that innovative or anything, but I've been enjoying it. Basically, you choose characters from Section 9 along with a new girl when you play. Each character has something they do as their thing:
- Batou: Rocket launcher in the arm.
- The Major: Cloaking.
- Pazu: Super speed.
- Bouma: Damage Resistance.
- Ishikawa: Sentry gun.
- Sniper Guy: Detects foes through walls with heat signatures.
- Togusa: Seeker drones that explode.
- New Girl (can't recall name): Makes a therm-optic barrier that disrupts vision somewhat and somehow slows down bullets.

Each ability has two levels, but level 2 is where things get interesting. Basically, a lot of the abilities can be shared to nearby teammates at level two, so you can have your squad roll in cloaked, or buffed, or seeing through walls. Level 1 refills over time and with points, but level 2 only shows up via points.

Hacking sadly only comes up during the game version of CTF, where you take over network nodes. Successfully capturing one deploys a tachikoma for the side that won it, so the opposite side then has to also deal with a tank. Said tank can be hacked by a player, causing it to progressively lock down and become vulnerable, but it leaves the player exposed on everyone's HUD.

The maps are decent, and I do like the visual design of them, even if it is weird to see posters of The Major. What the game really falls down on is integrating with the setting.

1) Lack of hacking of enemies. This should totally be a thing.
2) No super leaps and stuff. The only real augments you can acquire are consumable electronic chips. Lame.
3) The guns are nearly all IRL firearms, aside from the Saburo 5mm handgun and the Mateba revolver. GitS has plenty of in-universe firearms we could be using, such as the bullpup SMG from the first movie, the various Seburo SMG and rifles, etc etc.

Still, the game is fun and I'm enjoying it. Still technically an early access game. Cheap to buy, but it is free for another 30 hours on Steam.

ALSO. FUCK the knife in this game. The alt-fire for the knife does this bullshit insta-kill if you are in its absurdly good range. Basically the Halo 2 energy sword, but worse. Once the animation starts, you are already dead. Allies killing him before you die doesn't save you, and your ability to shoot as the asshole charges you ends once the animation begins. It'd be acceptable if it was a backstab only thing, but it isn't.
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Post by maglag »

Another thing I quite enjoyed in Disgaea was the item world. Now that's random battles!
radthemad4 wrote:
maglag wrote:You can also use the throwing NPCs one against the other to easily pass bills in the Dark Assembly.
Hmm... haven't tried that. I've avoided the voting segments since I'm stingy with items and can't just beat up the senators yet.
The throwing trick is based on two things:
1-Some senators can be bribed with cheap shop crap and you only really need one. And even if a senators hates you, there's a random chance they'll vote for you anyway, so you can always just restart until one does.
2-Now the key part, when you throw an hostile senator into a friendly senator, as long as the friendly senator was friendly, the pimped up senator will remain friendly to you!

So all you need to do is make sure you have one senator on your side (as long as they're not the lowest level senator), then throw the hostile senators to him in rising order of levels untill all that's left is an uber level senator that agrees with you. You actually don't need to attack anyone to pass a bill by force! Otherwise yes the senators are really tough fuckers to beat in a "fair" fight and bribing them all is a chore (technically the senators remember your bribes from one session to the other, so I guess the intention was that you would slowly build a network of loyal senators, but fuck that slow noise).

Also if you like stealing, something to take in account is that at a battle's start there's a separate chance that each enemy item will be a shiny with superior stat, and you can reload scum to get better steals.
Last edited by maglag on Mon May 02, 2016 1:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.
FrankTrollman wrote: Actually, our blood banking system is set up exactly the way you'd want it to be if you were a secret vampire conspiracy.
radthemad4
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Post by radthemad4 »

Mechalich wrote:Generally in Disgaea you should always upgrade the store as soon as possible. This is easier in later games because passing that bill will simply happen without any bribery required. You want to constantly maximize the weapon loadout for your primary attackers - since defense rapidly becomes pointless - to hit as hard as possible so you can maximize leveling.

Stealing is primarily a late game mechanic where it is absolutely required to get the best items in the game (various legendary weapons and accessories). In Disgaea 1 this requires the highest level thief you can acquire. In later iterations its just a matter of having a bunch of level 9999 characters and swinging with the 50% chance as needed.
Okay, I'll try to pass the expensive items bill and unlock the eye, belt, shoe, etc. slots and maybe make some frivolous purchases.
Mechalich wrote:You probably want to time reincarnation to access to effective leveling maps, so you can quickly bring reincarnated characters back upwards to where they were using team attacks and other leveling tricks. In the endgame, my Disgaea 1 memories are a bit rusty, but gain in the Cave of Ordeal 3 hits diminishing returns around level 2500, so that's the point there for Baal grinding.

Disgaea 1 is vastly less grind intensive than any subsequent Disgaea games - especially with animations turned off. Its basically a matter of using Winged Slayer (or a 3x3 spell) on CoD 3 about 5000 times. In subsequent Disgaea games that was like step 1 out of 20 of endgame grinding.
Wow... that'll probably take a while as I'm still on double digit levels... K, so not going to do any reincarnations for a long time.
maglag wrote:Another thing I quite enjoyed in Disgaea was the item world. Now that's random battles!
I only went there once, intending to level up a Swordbreaker, only to never use that again as I had stolen a much better shiny Magic Sword while in there. I was a bit worried about getting too powerful spending time there from levels and items, but enemies have started to threaten people who aren't Laharl (and sometimes him too when there's many of them and they're on those multiplier tiles) so I'm probably due for another visit.
maglag wrote:The throwing trick is based on two things:
1-Some senators can be bribed with cheap shop crap and you only really need one. And even if a senators hates you, there's a random chance they'll vote for you anyway, so you can always just restart until one does.
2-Now the key part, when you throw an hostile senator into a friendly senator, as long as the friendly senator was friendly, the pimped up senator will remain friendly to you!

So all you need to do is make sure you have one senator on your side (as long as they're not the lowest level senator), then throw the hostile senators to him in rising order of levels untill all that's left is an uber level senator that agrees with you. You actually don't need to attack anyone to pass a bill by force! Otherwise yes the senators are really tough fuckers to beat in a "fair" fight and bribing them all is a chore (technically the senators remember your bribes from one session to the other, so I guess the intention was that you would slowly build a network of loyal senators, but fuck that slow noise).

Also if you like stealing, something to take in account is that at a battle's start there's a separate chance that each enemy item will be a shiny with superior stat, and you can reload scum to get better steals.
This was extremely helpful, thank you :thumb: . Staying alive is a bit tricky as everyone but Magic Walled, Shielded (cast by Magic Boosted Flonne) Laharl goes down in one hit hit (not that he can much either), but I managed to get the bill passed against Senators, some of whom were in their early hundreds (my party is in its twenties, with Laharl in his early thirties) by ally throw merging.

Yeah, stealing's been pretty handy so far. A lot of enemies have nice swag. I'm wondering if I should sell some of it, but I should probably get the specialists from those first.
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Count Arioch the 28th
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Post by Count Arioch the 28th »

Since it's going to be a while before I can get Doom 4 I decided to play Doom 1 and 2 on XBLA. For shits and giggles I set it to medium (previously I had only played it on the easiest setting). I figured I'd get my shit shoved in, but I'm kicking ass. Eat it, 14 year old me!
In this moment, I am Ur-phoric. Not because of any phony god’s blessing. But because, I am enlightened by my int score.
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