/games/ - Video Games

>>57249
Continuing the 2d platformer with RPG elements I just played Popful Mail (Sega CD).
This feels just like an Ys game, which makes sense because it was made by falcom. It looks really cute and the humor is nice, but the localization is really hit or miss, I liked some parts but at some point it gets annoying, like having a boss who talks like a terrible Arnold Schwarzenegger impression and constantly throws stupid references to his movies. Other than this, my main problem with this game is the scrolling, you have to go way too close to the edge of the screen for it to scroll and sprites, while cute, are too fucking big, so you inevitably get hit. The last part was ridiculous, I had to constantly shoot offscreen just in case there was an enemy waiting, and what's worse, they do see you and shoot at you from offscreen. Other versions of the game seem to have smaller sprites and better scrolling, but they're not translated, my fault for not learning japanese I guess.
There's also the difficulty issue, the company who localized it other than adding their terrible jokes also raised the difficulty (I assume so they could get more money from rentals) so the game is fucking hard, there's a patch the re-adjusts the difficulty to the original values (mostly store prices and enemy damage output) but then the game becomes a cakewalk, only the final boss is somewhat difficult. So there's just no winning.
Anyway, it's a great game but it has some serious issues that come close to ruin the experience for me.

I finished 13 sentinels: Aegis Rim recently. I thought it was very good, but I think I could spend longer complaining about it then praising it, oddly. I do really enjoy these kinds of intricate plot twist heavy sci-fi stories, but i'm also kind of bored of them on their face now. I'm much more interested in stories that actually have a coherent, central idea that they want to get across/thematic complexity. I don't know if 13 sentinels really succeeds at doing that. It feels much more like an excessively complicated mish-mash of concepts with one plot twist too many. I mean, by the time you get to the end and they reveal it was all a simulation, it does kind of make some of the prior plot-twists feel meaningless. Why does it matter that time travel is revealed to be impossible, or that there's no world beyond the walls of the city? Figuring out these truths (although they were kind of obvious) was fun initially in the moment, but by the end they feel kind of arbitrary, because they were all simulated anyway. By the end, I don't really know what I was supposed to take away from this game, besides a vague idea about human perseverance and identity that wasn't really addressed as much as it could have been. Besides the story which makes up most of this game, there's also real-time strategy sections. They're fun, if a little tedious. I enjoyed spamming interceptors and sentry guns while leaving my guys next to the terminal and spamming shields and missile rain.

Also it's funny how renya gouto is just sci-fi miles edgeworth. I think him, miura, okino/hijiyama and nenji are my favorite characters. Shinonome would have been, especially because I really like her design, but the way they handled her character just wasn't that interesting. Oh, also fluffy was great.

>>57291
Thanks for writing this, it looks like right up my alley, I'll give it a shot. I watched a little bit of Faxanadu after reading your review. It looks really interesting but it lacks that endearment/cuteness factor I like on my games and this one certainly has those things.

Latest AVGN video inspired me to finally beat Contra, it took me 3 days of practice and memorization but I finally did it. The difficulty is really well crafted, at no point I felt I got a bullshit death, except maybe those fire thing is stage 6. Great game, gonna check the sequels later.

I finally finished Dark souls 3 after one year. Totaling up 369 hours of gameplay and defeating every boss except midir.

>>57408
You didn't beat midir for a reason in particular or just didn't feel like it? If you don't mind my asking

>>57409
I forgot

>>57410
Oh alright, the fight itself I thought was pretty mediocre, it can easily one shot you but every attack is very telegraphed and easy to dodge

>>57415
which is made more likely as the fight drags on since he's such a hp sponge. that cloud sorcery chews through his hp if you have that, and there are a few weapons that deal bonus damage, but it was a relatively small improvement iirc…

the dragon in the poison themed dlc (shulva?) in dark souls 2 was much better

>>57416
>the fight drags on since he's such a hp sponge
I think that's a problem with a lot of the bosses from DS3
>the dragon in the poison themed dlc (shulva?) in dark souls 2 was much better
Yeah, but none of the dragon bosses in these games are particularly good, I don't know maybe it's hard to design a good dragon boss fight since they're so big, and able to fly. My favorite is probably Kalameet and it's still kinda meh

>>57422
also a thing in bloodborne, especially on ng+ where even common enemies have a lot of hp on ng+, i mean much more than in the other souls games
wish i could replay it tbh

Just finished Shin Megami Tensei V. I did the chaos ending because I'm retarded, they literally ask you which route you want and I picked the wrong one. I enjoyed most of the game, but I'm kinda tired of it now, not sure if I should load the save and do the neutral route or just leave it be for now.

>>57430
i thought it was an embarrassing piece of shit. it dripfeeds content so slowly and the plot goes nowhere with zero choices, you're just a bitch to the angels the entire game. it introduces all these characters who do and say nothing.
i kept waiting for them to do something and kept waiting and waiting for boss fights (remember that III has 50 boss fights) and actual dialogue choices.

instead the game just ended while i was waiting for these things to happen that never did. the ending is decided with just 1 dialogue option like you said.

i'm never buying an Atlus game ever again personally.

>>57444
forgot to add that the entire game felt like a tutorial lmao. it wasn't until i reached the final dungeon that it wasn't a tutorial, that i was playing the true content the whole time.

>>57444
>>57445
I can't really deny anything you said, but my standards are so low when it comes to modern games I was pleasantly surprised by some things. Now that I'm playing ng+ to get the rest of the endings and going through the plot without side quests or grinding the game is like 5 hours long.
>the ending is decided with just 1 dialogue option like you said
Yeah it's worth noting that the game does keep track of your choices during the story, the one thing that changes I think is a quest at the end, depending on the alignment the npc might charge you money to start it, that and also an optional boss you fight, there's one for each alignment.

>>57468
well yeah you're right about that. if the game had been 50 more hours long, i would have considered it the best SMT game ever made i think. i wanted more dialogue from the side characters mostly, and also for them ALL to be route boss fights.

>>57470
I just beat the law and true neutral routes, it kinda sucks that they don't let you fuse Tsukuyomi, like they do with the other endgame bosses. Also for some reason Maria in law route is way weaker than Danu or Innana (the alternatives for other alignments), a bit inconsistent.
All I have left to do is regular neutral (which is just a shorter version of true neutral) and beat Demi-Fiend, who I tried to fight once and it absolutely destroyed me, and considering whatever I can get from him is going to be useless I think I'm done with this game for now. It just made me want to play nocturne again.

I posted about this game some time ago on this board, but I just beat the final boss of Final Fantasy XII. I've been playing it on and off for…almost a year now. It's strange, you know? When you've been playing a game or watching a show for that long on the side, it kind of feels like an old friend. Something you can always come back to. On the one hand, you're excited to finally see the conclusion, but on the other hand, there's this emptiness from knowing it's over. It's bittersweet.

I actually loved the battle system. I was actually dreading going into this game because I was thinking, "Oh great, another GRINDFEST" that I was expecting out of a Final Fantasy or JRPG in general, but the gambit system was fantastic. Knowing that I could essentially program the battle system kept me on a higher level, and when battles got boring, I honestly just put down the controller and did something else for a bit–or as I quickly learned: the run system is actually really good. It made it great as a casual playtime. But then the actually interesting battles actually required some thought, skill, and then applied strategy in a way I quite liked (e.g., one hunt battle taught me how amazing the spell "blind" is, some I would have to notice that a particular enemy would always use move X, and so I could equip an accessory to render that moot). Elementals, in particular, took me until 3/4 of the way through the game before I "figured them out." In short, battles were not a chore. If I do play this game some more (maybe out of a completionist urge), it'd be because of the battle system almost entirely.

The characters actually had arcs. Vaan actually matured, but not in a way that most scripts would beat you over the head with it. Each of their personalities actually interlaced with each other in a fitting way, with each filling a particular role, and no one appearing higher over the others. It felt like an actual party of friends as opposed to a gang following their leader. There also wasn't an overt morale you were bashed over the head with. While the majority of it seemed pragmatic in practice, dealing with straightforward survival and adventure; there was this larger theme and moving forward from being imprisoned by past loss.

I'd say the environments were beautiful, but I don't know how much that means because of how easily I'm impressed by that sort of stuff. I remember The Stilshrine of Miriam as particularly haunting for some reason.

From the beginning I was enamored. It opened with that familiar theme. It had all the tropes: Cid, airships, crystals, but interlain in a strange setting, storyline, and world. This was Final Fantasy's last hurrah. A star's supernova finale before eternal darkness.

I'll miss you.

>>57475
This game was fucking awesome. I definitely think this was probably the last one good, I know a lot of people think X was the last one good. I love playing RPGs particularly because it's like a long TV show with familiar characters, environments, when it's over you're saying goodbye to a friend.

Finished Tomb Raider 3
This game is an absolute joy.
I complained about TR2 having too many enemies before, well it seems the devs realized this and this sequel has the right amount of enemies for me. Also the level design is probably my favorite in the first three games, the game is longer than TR2 but it felt shorter. I don't know I just really liked it and thought it was an improvement over both previous games.
The one complain I have is you often pull levers and they don't show you what they just did, so you kind have to guess. Oh and the playstation version doesn't have unlimited saves, so you either get good, play the PC version or use save states like I did.

>>57504
Out of Tomb Raider I, II, and III would you suggest just skipping to III?

>>57505
This one was defintely my favorite but I think they're all worth playing, they're not connected in any way afaik so if you're just gonna play one you might as well play this one

Finished Dead Space 2, it was pretty good, game is more action focused than DS1, which is a kind of a detriment to me, but the controls feel way smoother so it's alright, it's not like the first game was huge on exploration or puzzles in the first place. The character now has more of a personality, in the first game he kinda was a blank slate for the player to self insert into, I don't care about this either way to be honest, but some people seem to dislike, especially because now he makes "snarky" remarks like some dumb marvel movie.
Enemies are mostly the same as previous game, but there are some new ones, like those exploding fucks who catch you off-guard and dismember you without having a chance to escape. Enemy placement I thought was annoying at times, there are segments that are just straight corridors and enemies spawn at certain points, you get rid of them, walk three steps, a couple more enemies spawn, and so on. Now, I don't remember if it was like this in DS1 but it did get a bit tedious at times.
The plot feels like a nice wrap up of the story, but they do hint at more sequels in a post-credit phone call recording between some powerful man and an underling (Kojima san is that you?), and sure enough a third game came out a couple of years after, but everyone seems to hate it, so I don't know if I'll be playing that anytime soon.

>>57548
did you take any nice screenshots?

>>57550
Sadly no, I don't usually take screenshots when I play. It does have some nice imagery and gruesome deaths

>>57557
do devs even bother coding carnage technologies at this point? nowadays it cuts to black like the sopranos before the physics/fatality activates if any

>>57562
I mean dead space sold itself on “dood look just how gory our game is” so they put a decent amount of effort in it. All the enemies can be dismembered and you are supposed to play this way. But I don’t remember any especially good gore beyond that because another selling point was your ability to take blown off body parts and throw them at enemies to kill them. So this lead to most of the monsters basically being lego rag dolls with defined parts and cutting planes. You can’t slice things up a la metal gear rising.

>>57563
>most of the monsters basically being lego rag dolls with defined parts and cutting planes
You're absolutely right, the dismemberment system is rigid as fuck, not being able to cut a monster because you're not shooting in just the right angle is pretty stupid, I've wasted entire mags on monsters arms or legs and they wouldn't cut off because I was shooting vertical shots when they should've been horizontal, for example.
Also explosions are inconsistent as fuck sometimes mines would completely obliterate an enemy and some other times it would come out of the blast unscathed. They could've defintely improved a lot in that regard

>>57563
>>57564
wish devs didn't take the lazy route when it comes to amputation points like when the game deletes the body part and spawns a limb upright. poor attempt!

like you said if guts is the selling point I commend diablo 3 dead rising 1 and hells highway for trying

Finally beat Sonic Heroes. Well, at least all the teams/chaos emeralds/Metal Sonic, I'm not going to go and get A-rank in every level. I already talked about it a lot in >>57599 and >>57636 , and probably in the dedicated Sonic thread we have in here. I guess this is my official review?

Never, NEVER have I had a game that I warmed up to. Usually, I'll like it in the beginning, and then the spark will fade away, or I'll like it all the way through, or I'll hate it all the way through. This is probably the first game that I didn't really like at the beginning, but after a while it charmed its way into my heart. I wouldn't say it was good. You know how corn nuts "taste bad, but you keep snacking away anyways"? I was playing Sonic Heroes, and kept coming back to it. I thought it was another "corn nuts" phenomenon, but there was this voice in the back of my head screaming, "No, something else is going on here, something is very enticing."

I kept playing and slogging through. I realized that I could detail very precisely WHY this was a "VIDYAGAME CRITIC SAY THIS BAD" game, but I also realized that I found it legitimately FUN. This contradiction really gnawed at me. I did not play the story modes in succession, but rather in parallel with each other, and it wasn't until the final 3-4 stages per character into the game (and one of the story modes at the Egg Emperor) that I finally started to play MUCH better. Something about how the game "thought" and how it "controlled" finally clicked. It wasn't REALLY sudden, but it was sudden. More of a sigmoid function rather than a step function. As I beat the story modes and finished it up, I was FINALLY able to dilineate what it was I found so interesting about this game.

This game was made by aliens.

There is a logic, but it's not of this universe. E.g., in a regular RPG if you saw a save point next to a giant door you'd think, "Alright! Cutscene and boss battle!" But this game had its own way of thought. For example, in regular videogame land, you see a spring at the end of a pathway and you think "Got it, aim for that and course correct along the way"–instead in Sonic Heroes it was "Place yourself correctly at the START of the path, and we will FORCE you into that position by the end, so make sure the starting position is correct!" There were many sections like this–the autorunning sections in particular–and it would give you signs that these sections were coming up so you could anticipate for them. By the end of the game, the level designs made and make PERFECT sense, but when I was first starting, they were unlike NOTHING I've ever seen. Once things finally start "clicking" and you understand the fucking bizarre alien psychology of the dev team, you "knew" where the camera direction changes were going to happen. It even continued to outside the actual levels: once you beat all the normal stages you think, "So…where's the special stage I unlocked???" only to find that on one of the main menu screens you're supposed to go to the far right of the screen. There wasn't an arrow indicator. There wasn't a change in background on the Team Select screen. You were just supposed to know. And somehow…you do: because you start thinking like the weirdos who made this. NOTHING was uncalled for, but to a regular human it would be so.

And the controls being bad. No. That wasn't what was going on at all! I really thought that was the case, but now I know that the controls make sense. And this is the most important part of the game and I think it's the reason why suddenly near the end everything clicked: it was the PHYSICS (see >>57636 ). The controls made perfect sense, but it was the PHYSICS that were out of this world. The programmer who made this game did NOT understand the difference between velocity and speed! A wall would kill your speed in one direction only, but not your overall velocity, which means you go FLYING off into the distance! There's a stage where you do a loop-de-loop on…the _outside_ of the rail (where'd that centripetal force come from? How am I not flying off the outside of this circle?). In the special stages when you go around a turn inside a tube, you do NOT have to turn the character's direction to compensate for the centrifugal forces. Things you think you WOULD bounce off of you don't, and think you DON'T think you'd bounce off of you would! I've watched a lot of reviews now where they complain about 'glitches' or 'jank' and I can say, "Nonono, that makes SENSE why that happened!" (for example, the embedded review complains about sliding along the tube in the emerald stages. I know why people do that: it's because you DON'T HAVE MOMENTUM AROUND TURNS. In other words, your brain THINKS that if you go around a turn in a tube you should slide up the side of the tube, but that's not how Sonic Heroes does it, which mean people playing these special stages overcorrect) Once I realized this, everything just CLICKED and I was able to play SO much better. This was also the main reason why I think I was having a lot of fun with this: it's like a parallel universe where Planck's constant is different or something. You just want to understand this bizarre movement.

And the plot was…not good. It was…not bad. It was…just lovably cheesy.

From top to bottom, this was made by aliens.

>>57685

ngl I gave up on it when trying to get A rank for the true boss or final stage or whatever. The stages are very long and I found they require no getting hit to retain your rings as well as finishing quickly and killing enemies for the top score. I tried a few times on Team Sonic's stages, but they were so long and I kept getting hit by random things. I never got A rank on anything. I still love the game, but just like a lot of the gamecube era games, it has hard requirements that tend not to be worth it in the end. Other games that come to mind are LOZ: WW and Luigi's Mansion. Wind Waker requires you to beat the game two times, and on the the second time, take pictures of all the bosses for 100% completion. Luigi's Mansion has a system that you have to collect rare stuff in a room, like golden mice, before beating the room. Otherwise, you'll not be able to get those things. Also, you must suck up the boss ghosts in one fell swoop, which I found to be almost impossible for the bodybuilder ghost, Adonis.

I wanna beat Sonic Heroes. It's one of the Gamecube games I haven't beaten along with the aforementioned games. It's a good game casually, but not in a completionist way.

I beat 3 games, Wonder Boy 3: The Dragon's Trap, Wonder Boy in Monster World and Monster World IV, despite the names these games could be considered Monster World 2,3 and 4 of course.
They're all action platformers with RPG elements, nowadays they'd get lumped in the "metroidvania" genre but I think they're closer to a zelda II than a metroid.
The graphics are really cute, the master system was capable of nicer looking things than the nes, there's no way around it.
Gameplay-wise they all suffer from what I call the zelda II syndrome (sword is too fucking short and you get hit) but they're still pretty easy, except for the final boss of Wonder Boy in Monster World in the american version.
Each game has its own gimmick: WB3 had 4 different transformation which allow you to swim, fly or get in narrow places, I bet whoever made Symphony of the Night played this game before, my one issue with it is not being able to change forms on the fly, the game would be perfect if it wasn't for that detail, I think they added that feature in the remake but whatever.
WBiMW was probably the most plain of them all, its progression is mostly item based and kinda boring, you need this item to swim, you need the ocarina to open this door, you need this amulet to make the temple appear, etc. Speaking of Ocarina it actually has an ocarina which you play like in Ocarina of Time, sadly it's only used in a single dungeon.
MW4 is the cutest of them all, but also the easiest, to progress through this game you use a little pet thingy called "pepelogoo" it's a flying little furball that allows you to grab on it to glide, double jump, and interact with different switches and other dungeon hazards, this game is way more linear and once you get the pepelogoo you don't really get new abilites to unlock previously inaccessible places, there's a single city which you use as a hub and 4 dungeons (plus a) which are all entered from the city, kinda lazy when you think about it, I liked the dungeons in this game better than the other 2 though, although you don't get to re-enter them after you beat them, I left some chests unopened and I'm afraid I'll never knew what was inside unless I start the game over.

So yeah I'm kinda sick of typing I don't even think people read these, the games are fun and cute, play them if you like this sort of thing, don't expect a "metroidvania" though, just a 2d action platformer with rpg elements.

>>57704
bot pic is a spinoff? trying to avoid spoilers so gotta be careful with a few posts here but will read/listen to a rant warning me in advance. think you'd drop wonder boy if it were dark and gritty with cute aspect completely removed for a serious tone?

>>57710
>bot pic is a spinoff?
They're all considered part of the main series, although they're very different games
>think you'd drop wonder boy if it were dark and gritty with cute aspect completely removed for a serious tone
No I'd still play them, they're solid games, not perfect but still good. If you ask me what I prefer, I love stuff like castlevania, which is dark fantasy I guess, not so gritty but not as colorful as these games.

>>57704
Dragon's Trap has a modern remake that's good. It has upgraded graphics and some QOL improvements but runs on the original ROM basically, so it's virtually the same mechanically and you can switch graphics on the fly for example.

>>57732
Yes, I gave it try and it's a decent remake, although I prefer the pixel art graphics. The QOL changes are welcome, especially being able to save, the codes are way too long and don't give all the stuff you had.
Monster World IV also has a remake but I don't like how it looks so I havent tried it

>>57733
Regarding modern games there's a spiritual successor, Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom. There's also Aggelos, which is a quality indie game inspired by Wonder Boy.

>>57761
I had heard of Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom, had no idea Aggelos was a thing, it looks really nice, it's weird to find good indie games, will give a try some time

Soul Blader (or Soul Blazer in the west)

A top-down action rpg with some simple townbuilding elements. You go through dungeons fighting monsters spawning from portals and then take over those portals to restore NPCs to the hub areas who can give you items, equipment, or sometimes hints. The gameplay is pretty simplistic, you have 1 basic sword attack and some magic attacks which consume gems (a consumable that enemies drop) that you have to aim using an orb circling around you. No real special movement or abilities. Despite this it was surprisingly addictive and fun to play through, probably because restoring the towns you visit is satisfying and the equipment you get tend to have unique effects (like preventing trap damage, restoring health on defeating enemies, doubling your attack/defense, etc). And it didn't overstay it's welcome, I didn't keep track of the time I spent but it was definitely under 10 hours.

Finished Deus Ex: Human Revolution.
I think the game was ok, at least entertaining, it's mostly stealth, even though you can shoot your way out of every situation, I think the "pacifist" approach is encouraged, except for the boss fights, which look like something out of Metal Gear Solid 2 and most of the times there's no option to fight (there's only one in which you can hack combat droid and have them do the fighting for you, I think).
Mechanically the game is a weird mish mash of first person and 3rd person cover-based shooter, which caused me motion sickness at the beginning, but I got used to it.
The plot takes place 25 years before the original Deus Ex, in a transition era, when humans started getting augmentations, and of course there are groups that are against it, at some points they try to draw parallels between augs and abortions, which are completely not subtle, but I guess it also does paint how corporations are using it for profit, masking it as "progress".
Mechanically the game doesn't do anything more impressive than the first deux ex, except the cover system, which is pretty useless most of the time. There is a hacking minigame, so there's that, I think the original game was just a dice roll, or a skill check, I don't know. Must be fun being a developer and having to make a hacking minigame which of course is nothing like actual hacking, most games with hacking seem to have a different approach, my favorite is probably the one in Nier Automata.
Anyway I thought the game was good, not great, someday I'll probably play the sequel.

>>57807
Sequel is generally more of the same, so I recommend it.

>>57808
That's good to hear

It's finally over. I have completed Oblivion. I have completed the main quest, all of the faction quests, the miscellaneous quests, the quests that don't appear in your journal, the shivering isles main quests and its miscellaneous quests (excluding that stupid museum one), all other DLC, and finally, the Hermaenous Mora quest, which marks the completion of all Daedric prince quests. It's over. I spent 172 hours, 12 minutes on this one character and 200+ hours on a previous character. I did the factions at least twice and many misc quests more than once. Sadly, the Glarthir quest completely broke on me. I think I did complete that quest on my previous character though.

If I had to talk about the game, I would say the quests range from mediocre (mage's guild quest) to pretty good (Shivering isles and Dark Brotherhood quests). The Shivering Isles quests had lots of dialogue choices that I had to go over and a little more freedom. Luckily, not too much freedom where you have a million different outcomes for different choices. The Dark Brotherhood's questline is always talked well about, so not much to say on that. Same with how the mage's guild and fighter's guild questlines are mediocre. If I had to say anything, I would say I was very happy to finally beat the Shivering isles questline and was happy too finish the main questline after probably 150 hours into the game. I'm sure lots of people don't care for the main questline though.

The mechanics are bad and have been cheapened in every way. Magic has been nerfed to hell for one. I'm a mage, and I can feel the effects. You can't summon multiple creatures any more, you can't make super jump spells because acrobatics is capped at 255, levitation is gone, damage attributes and skills is gone (which disappointed me greatly), teleporting is gone, etc. Still magic is the best way to deal damage other than poisons because you can't block a spell with a shield. I think this was the true downfall of the series here. It all got worse right here. Sure, Morrowind's magic was technically nerfed from Daggerfall in a few ways, but this magic system was the stepping stone to what Skyrim would become. The signs were there in Oblivion when they nerfed magic this hard. Skyrim is just the end product of their plan.

Melee combat is, in my opinion, worse than Morrowind's. It's still a step in the right direction that leads to Skyrim's better combat, but it's still bad. Everything's floaty and blocking is the dominant strategy. Power attacks do 2.5x damage but end up never being worth it because in that time, you can get about three attacks in. Also, regular attacks allow you to be more mobile and get behind your opponent. Also, power attacks can be blocked and don't break a block like in Skyrim. The best strategy is to strafe away from your opponent, wait for them to attack, block, and then get behind them and turn with them for free hits. Also, obviously, health goes up as you level, so melee becomes a slow way of killing. I usually just used a 300 point kill spell at the end.

Stealth is also marginally better than the last game. Sneaking actually works now, thank the gods. I'm pretty sure I read their sneak increases with your level ups, so don't bother pick pocketing. Also, later in the game, doors WILL get harder in the towns. At the beginning of the game, houses might have an easy or average lock, while at the late game, a hard or very hard lock. The very hard locks are usually preserved for containers though. I never really bothered with sneak though. Pickpocketing is useless, I have spells and open lock, and thievery for anything but rare things like gems is useless. The game throws expensive stuff your way at the end.

The leveling system itself is bad and causes these problems, but I think it itself is the problem. This will be quick since it's gone over a million times. Improve endurance first for maximum gains on health, don't over level your character to prevent melee becoming useless, etc. That health thing does bring down the game though. It makes combat useless and fills the world with expensive Daedric items that cost over 3,000 gold easily. Money is thrown at you at the late game and it kills the immersion. With that, thievery becomes useless as well. Now with fighting and thievery gone, the only viable way to play is with poisons or magic.

I think, overall, Oblivion's mechanics led Skyrim's sneak and fighting to be way better.

I think the game actually does have some very cool mechanics that Morrowind and Skyrim have. The unique items found from searching dungeons, crypts, bandit caves, etc. are amazing. The mundane ring is one of the best rings in the game, for example. It really makes me feel like an adventurer when I get it. However, it's so good that custom enchantments become worse. In fact, the best setup in the game is from pre-enchanted gear. Enchantments are no longer useful by then. Also, I think it has a good balance between Morrowind's and Skyrim's dungeon respawning system. Dungeons respawn and it's viable to just go dungeoneering. However, it's not instant like Morrowind and not too long like Skyrim. I think it's 72 hours in Oblivion, instant in Morrowind if you don't get rid of the bodies, and 10 days in Skyrim. It's a good compromise for training on weak enemies. Also, the enemies are much easier than in Morrowind. You can totally do a no death run better since in Morrowind, everyone's deadly if you have poor agility and low health. I guess that's also a bad thing too, but honestly, by the end of my Morrowind run, I had no reason to go dungeon crawling. I had enough money where I could gather souls for a good living. Skyrim's on the other side too. It forces you to go from dungeon to dungeon to train weapon skills. In Morrowind, you can easily respawn a cave and camp out near a city or town. In Oblivion, I remember in a previous run where I was min maxing that I would go from dungeon to dungeon, but not as frequently as the small dungeons of Skyrim. It's a good compromise I think.

Overall, Oblivion is a worse Skyrim in the mechanics department and a dumbed down Morrowind. Skyrim did combat and stealth better, Morrowind did magic better. The quests are probably the best in the series though. Morrowind's quests don't realize as much of a story and Skyrim's quests are too simplistic and short. Oblivion has a lot of potential if you decide to mod the hell out of it. Even my modded version wasn't enough. The core gameplay is fubar. Also, I didn't even mention everything about everything. Like, it goes deeper for magic. Way deeper. In the end, I just wanted to beat the quests, the only good part of the game. I didn't want to play any more because I had gotten everything I needed or wanted.

Finished Bully
I can't help but think it's just an inferior GTA. Of course you have to work with the limitations of being a high school student, so not a lot of guns, not many vehicles and not a huge city to explore. The thing is, what did they replace these things with? Well, nothing. It's just GTA, with a few gimmicky weapons, bikes as sole form of transportation (and a skateboard that's slightly faster than running), a lot of melee combat, which would be fine if it wasn't so simple, games like Yakuza are 99% fist combat, they they have fun and somewhat complex systems, in this game I can't think of a single fight in which I couldn't just win by mashing square. The map is not just limited to the school, but it's not that much bigger either, and for some reason bikes are fucking scarce, I ended up running way more than I'd like to. School students are fucking annoying too, always trying to beat you up and, for some reason, the prefects only go after you when you fight back.
But at least the story is good? No, predictable as fuck, it's so predictable that it leaves you waiting for a twist that never happens, you could say it's so predictable, it loops back and becomes unpredictable, if that makes any sense.
I don't know, I expected more than just dumbed down GTA.

>>57879

which gta? all of them?

i would say bully is better than gta 3 and vice city

>>57916
Nah San Andreas onward, it plays very similar to SA

Finished Talos Principle and its DLCs
It's pretty good
Except for that stupid moon landing puzzle, fuck that

Finished Braid, it's a good game, simple but with somewhat complex puzzles. My only problem with it is that some of the puzzles give you too little margin for error, even when you figure the puzzle out they give you just the exact amount of time to pull the solution off, which in some cases made me wonder if I was even doing the right thing, not a huge fan of the art style, game is hand drawn but the characters look kinda ugly to me, I guess it's a matter of taste.

Danganronpa 1-3 and Phoenix wright AA.


Danganronpa is just irredeemable shit, that gets stupider and more formulaic as time goes on. No idea why there is such a big social media fandom for these games, the murders are usually ridiculous and the characters are poorly written. Only interesting thing was the first game setting and that eventually got destroyed as well.

Phoenix Wright didn't exactly draw me in either. The cases are long and hard to deduce with all the twists, and the cross-examinations mechanic just seemed rather trivial. Edgeworth was the only really stand-out character in the cast

here's everything I've beaten so far in May.

A Winters Daydream - really short but decent VN about grandma that becomes qt young succubus again for a day was a solid 7/10

Mimana Iyar Chronicles - random encounters really took this game from a potential 8 down to a 6. Decent enough story but the encounter rate is gross

Utawarerumono: Prelude to the Fallen - Flawless 10/10

Lunar Silver Star Story - solid 9/10 kinda generic story but told wonderfully

Psycho Pass Mandatory Happiness - only did one route so far but decent enough 7/10

YS: Origin - Only completed 1/3 routes so far but 9/10 boss fights are pretty tough making it very rewarding to beat

Punchline - about halfway through so far but I'd give it a 7.5, silly fan service and pretty decent story