What are you playing?

figmentPez

Staff member
Evoland 2 the first game was a relatively short parody of console RPGs, and focused more on jokes and references than it did on story or gameplay, but it worked at what it was doing. This sequel has expanded it's scope, and is not only trying for more of a story, but has tossed in other types of games as well. Thus far I've run into: Professor Layton type puzzles, a fighting game, a vertically scrolling shoot-em-up, 2D platforming (complete with disappearing-reappearing platforms and insta-death spikes), and a Canabalt/endless-runner type segment. That's in addition to the Zelda-esque combat, dungeons, talking to NPCs, fetch quests, collectible card game, etc. that come with the RPG-ish structure of the game.

So far, I really cannot recommend it. The writing sucks, none of the gameplay types are especially well done, and some of the portions are outright bad. 2D platforming with insta-death spikes has no place in an RPG. Even with the checkpoints, it's an exercise in frustration. The controls are just too sluggish and imprecise to make the platforming feel rewarding.

The first game wasn't great, but it was fun. It was an enjoyable joke about all the features that have come and gone from console RPGs over the years. The combat wasn't anything to write home about, but it didn't get in the way of things, either. This game isn't that at all. It has all these other game types thrown in, but they're just there. Aside from a joke about how a character hopes that they don't end up in an FPS, there's not any commentary or jokes about those game types. The first game barely had a 4th wall; at one point you open a chest that contains a village with NPCs. Evoland 2 just makes references while still mostly pretending that the 4th wall is still there, and in doing so has completely lost what made the first game interesting.
Continued playing because I'm stubborn like that, and I liked the first enough to give the second a chance to redeem itself. It hasn't, but at least more of the sections have felt competent.

I've now come across sections inspired by: Double Dragon (surprisingly fun), Chrono Trigger (extremely tedious), Puzzle Quest (good, but a really shallow copy), Bomberman (terrible), Fire Emblem (not sure yet) and a few little mini-game versions of Pong, Snake, Pac-Man, and Space Invaders. All that and more 2D platforming with insta-death spikes! *sigh* Oh, and I forgot about the stealth section earlier. (On the plus side, there hasn't been a sportsball section yet!)

This game loves other games, and referencing other games, but it doesn't understand other games. It's CCG section doesn't let you deck-build. So you're eternally stuck with the crappy starter cards, which throws a lot more luck into battles than their should be. The Bomberman section frequently had fights with enemies in open areas, which ruins the strategy of bombing.

Also, the writing continues to be derivative crap. Just like the copy-paste of other games, this feels like someone copied everything from other RPGs, but without understanding it. The characters are obnoxious. I with the game had help menus and pop-ups explaining the game mechanics as explicitly as the characters telegraph every bit of the plot.

There are good things I can say about it. The art is good. The characters are recognizable across the various 2D and 3D styles the game uses for different time periods, and the world looks good as well. The music is competent. And some of the gameplay is pretty good (but not good enough to make up for the terrible sections).
 
Pikachu is a mouse, not a squirrel. This is obviously Pachirisu

Aww. I wish it was this little guy. He’s so cute. No, it’s a mangy, bastard that jumps on my head from the trees. I’ve destroyed him enough now that my cat is wearing a very cute puffy coat now :)

I just need Anjanoth to cooperate and drop some more teeth and a plate. I’ve certainly bashed his skull in enough times. My daughter even called me savage lol.
 
Hey, I just got the super rare plate after mentioning it here. Still no fangs though. I have so many pelts and scales though. I could make my own T-Rex.
 
I’m just over 20 minutes which is so much better than my first kill. My first kill was a mess. I’ve got two more fangs now and I only need two more.

I’m taking a break for a while :)[DOUBLEPOST=1518486033,1518485985][/DOUBLEPOST]It would be really fun to try sometime!!
 
With three months of board history gone, I’m sure I can recruit more people on to either team Monster Hunter or Team Pokémon!
If you're game to get the murder bear, and have the day or two's time it'll take before season end, I'll still make good on my promise to help blast you through the first four chapters to get it. Assuming you can stay awake, that is.

--Patrick
 
If you're game to get the murder bear, and have the day or two's time it'll take before season end, I'll still make good on my promise to help blast you through the first four chapters to get it. Assuming you can stay awake, that is.

--Patrick
it really is a shame I'm on the EU servers, currently still working on Champion (I think, the one before Conqueror). Malthael T13 is no laughing matter. My gear is all still horribly rolled.


Anyway, Star Wars episode 1 racer was released on GOG a few days ago, and I've been playing that. It's still a really fun racing game, though nostalgia probably plays a part there too.
 
it really is a shame I'm on the EU servers, currently still working on Champion (I think, the one before Conqueror). Malthael T13 is no laughing matter. My gear is all still horribly rolled.
I haven't tried to see what the latency is with EU servers, but if we can hook up (I know your schedule is somewhat opposite mine) I have no problem helping boost you up, either. Only thing I would need would be the ride to 70, because doing that yourself is a big time-waster.

--Patrick
 
If you're game to get the murder bear, and have the day or two's time it'll take before season end, I'll still make good on my promise to help blast you through the first four chapters to get it. Assuming you can stay awake, that is.

--Patrick
Right now, I have to get all my art done for the show. Once that’s in, can i get back to you?
 
Played through Battletech. Not gonna lie, I'm disappointed. Hopefully this is like Harebrained Schemes last few games, the Shadowrun Returns games, where they learn their mistakes from the first game and the next couple are vastly improved.

First off, the game runs like a crippled 89 year old sumo wrestler. It has performance issues like you wouldn't believe. The mission variety leaves a lot to be desired. Almost every single non-story mission is move once or twice, engage enemy mechs, repeat forever. There's some really fucked up balance issues with weapons too, like why is a 60 ton SRM carrier tank the deadliest thing on the battlefield? I would rather face a lance of heavy mechs than a squad that includes two of those God damn things. The injury system is beyond annoying. Oh did, your mech get hit once? Well, your pilot was probably injured and will have to sit out of combat for 6 weeks. The ability to acquire new mechs is fucking busted too. I played through the entire campaign and did a ton of non-story missions and I saw some mechs only once (You acquire mechs in 1/3rd batches of parts..so if you fuck up a mech too badly, you need to see it on the battlefield more than once for salvage and headshotting a mech requires the luck of the fucking gods themselves). The double heat sinks I got from one mission awarded mech were the most irreplaceable thing in the entire game for me since I literally never saw another one again.

The core gameplay is fun, but fuuuuuck is it flawed.

Also, anyone that complains that the game lets you play as a they instead of a him or her is the dumbest fucking idiot to ever live. Fucking period.
 
Best guess is that season end will probably be May 18th or May 25th, since they're supposed to run for 3 month stretches.

--Patrick
Since I'm out of town (and without pc) 12 th through to the 19 th, that means I won't get the stash tab this season either...oh pfoui.
 
Played through Battletech. Not gonna lie, I'm disappointed. Hopefully this is like Harebrained Schemes last few games, the Shadowrun Returns games, where they learn their mistakes from the first game and the next couple are vastly improved.

First off, the game runs like a crippled 89 year old sumo wrestler. It has performance issues like you wouldn't believe. The mission variety leaves a lot to be desired. Almost every single non-story mission is move once or twice, engage enemy mechs, repeat forever. There's some really fucked up balance issues with weapons too, like why is a 60 ton SRM carrier tank the deadliest thing on the battlefield? I would rather face a lance of heavy mechs than a squad that includes two of those God damn things. The injury system is beyond annoying. Oh did, your mech get hit once? Well, your pilot was probably injured and will have to sit out of combat for 6 weeks. The ability to acquire new mechs is fucking busted too. I played through the entire campaign and did a ton of non-story missions and I saw some mechs only once (You acquire mechs in 1/3rd batches of parts..so if you fuck up a mech too badly, you need to see it on the battlefield more than once for salvage and headshotting a mech requires the luck of the fucking gods themselves). The double heat sinks I got from one mission awarded mech were the most irreplaceable thing in the entire game for me since I literally never saw another one again.

The core gameplay is fun, but fuuuuuck is it flawed.

Also, anyone that complains that the game lets you play as a they instead of a him or her is the dumbest fucking idiot to ever live. Fucking period.
The 60 ton, 60-shot SRM/LRM carriers are straight from the table top game, where they were ALSO a menace. Those things are scary as hell, but they are also pretty fragile: you could melee one in a light mech and probably take it out.

Stuff like double heat sinks are "lostech" in 3025; this is pre-clan invasions so stuff like that is literally only found on tech from the Star League, something that existed hundreds of years ago, because much of humanity's knowledge was lost back when everybody was nuking each other. So yes... that stuff is LITERALLY irreplaceable in the era that Battletech 2018 takes place in. This is also why some mech designs are so rare; they ether brand new and state of the art (like the Cataphract, which only entered production in 3025) or else just rare designs/varients from hundreds of years ago.
 
The 60 ton, 60-shot SRM/LRM carriers are straight from the table top game, where they were ALSO a menace. Those things are scary as hell, but they are also pretty fragile: you could melee one in a light mech and probably take it out.

Stuff like double heat sinks are "lostech" in 3025; this is pre-clan invasions so stuff like that is literally only found on tech from the Star League, something that existed hundreds of years ago, because much of humanity's knowledge was lost back when everybody was nuking each other. So yes... that stuff is LITERALLY irreplaceable in the era that Battletech 2018 takes place in. This is also why some mech designs are so rare; they ether brand new and state of the art (like the Cataphract, which only entered production in 3025) or else just rare designs/varients from hundreds of years ago.
Problem is they aren't that fragile. God damn things can take 4 PPC hits without going up if you're not lucky with shot placement. And because of squad limitations and action economy, if you're taking light mechs beyond the early parts of the game, you're gonna get rolled. You only ever get a lance of 4, no matter the weight, whereas you can go up against as many as two enemy lances with tank or turret backup. The light mech's ability to evade doesn't last long against that many enemy actions.

And being true to the lore is all well and good, but it doesn't make for fun gameplay to sit on 1/3rd of a mech for 30 hours of a campaign with sweet fuck all to do with it.
 
Problem is they aren't that fragile. God damn things can take 4 PPC hits without going up if you're not lucky with shot placement. And because of squad limitations and action economy, if you're taking light mechs beyond the early parts of the game, you're gonna get rolled. You only ever get a lance of 4, no matter the weight, whereas you can go up against as many as two enemy lances with tank or turret backup. The light mech's ability to evade doesn't last long against that many enemy actions.

And being true to the lore is all well and good, but it doesn't make for fun gameplay to sit on 1/3rd of a mech for 30 hours of a campaign with sweet fuck all to do with it.
Yeah, that's basically one of the problems I have with the lore and playing Mechwarrior (the FASA pen and paper RPG, not the computer games) in general. Limited resources mean you're going to be waiting a lot more than you'd like.
 
Yeah, that's basically one of the problems I have with the lore and playing Mechwarrior (the FASA pen and paper RPG, not the computer games) in general. Limited resources mean you're going to be waiting a lot more than you'd like.
I understand going for some level of "realism" (even though it's a game about giant mech suits doing battle, but whatever), but it was like FASA never understood that the fun part of the game was the battles and the RP, and not the "for the next two weeks I work my normal job and occasionally turn a wrench on my mech and then I quit because this is fucking boring," which is what all of our games wound up being. Though I suppose some of that was probably down to the GM we had - his idea of creative GM'ing was to change some of the NPC names from the modules he was running.
 
I understand going for some level of "realism" (even though it's a game about giant mech suits doing battle, but whatever), but it was like FASA never understood that the fun part of the game was the battles and the RP, and not the "for the next two weeks I work my normal job and occasionally turn a wrench on my mech and then I quit because this is fucking boring," which is what all of our games wound up being. Though I suppose some of that was probably down to the GM we had - his idea of creative GM'ing was to change some of the NPC names from the modules he was running.
RIFTS is even worse in many ways. The Palladium combat system is geared so that it's basically just too damn easy to hit things, especially with Mega-Damage. Basically, you roll a d20, and if your result is a modified 5+, you hit. That's better than 75% of the time. A common, low grade MDC weapon will do 2d6 MDC damage. That averages to 7 points. All characters unless otherwise noted start with at least 4 attacks per round - a juicer gets an additional two, and those who study boxing gain an additional one, so they'll have 7, plus with their auto-dodge feature, they don't have to spend attacks to dodge. So a basic mook with a common weapon will, on average, hit 3 times per round, doing 7 points per hit. That's 21 points of damage per round.

Medium MDC armor has between 40-60 MDC. That means that it will last less than 3 rounds of combat. And don't think about scavenging armor off a slain enemy - if you did enough damage to kill them, their armor has been completely destroyed. Buying a replacement set? good luck! If you are lucky enough to be near a settlement where you can buy weapons and armor, most of it costs tens of thousands of credits, and your character will frequently have less than 1,000 credits unless your GM is very generous.
 
I'm going to again tempt people into playing Elite by showing this PvP fight taking place in the ring of a gas giant (not of me, of someone actually good)

I played Elite Dangerous for 20 minutes. I flew into a planet and couldn't figure out what to do next. Then I turned it off.
 
Both of them? Yikes!
Yes, it's called a HOTAS, or Hands On Throttle and Stick. The left is a throttle to control speed, plus various wheels and hats and buttons for lots of functions, and the right is a flight stick, also with lots of switches and buttons.

They make one for the xbox one...

 
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