I just hate the idea of dismissing games because of a narrow glance at it (especially if it matches so much of what you say you want). I don’t usually like turn based RPGs, but the game seems interesting and like it’s made by people with passion, so I gave it a try and it’s great. This is the type of game we should be applauding, not generic games that follow formulas. Pirate it and try it before deciding you don’t like it because of a relatively minor feature. You can’t make a good decision with such little information. As the saying goes, don’t just a book by its cover.
It’s absolutely turn based. You’re trying to stretch it to something it’s not. Yes, it has QTEs. That doesn’t make it an action RPG. Nothing happens by surprise. You can put your controller down and nothing will happen. Also, as the other person says, you can ignore them if you want; just set the difficulty lower.
Most of the game is just walking around exploring though, and you only enter fights when you walk into an enemy. You always know what’s going to happen when. There’s almost no surprises.
Yep. I remembering hearing they were going to try to get it back to where you could use keyboard only (though the binds would likely change), but I don’t know if that’s still the plan. The mouse option is great to have for users who refuse to learn keyboard (or just haven’t yet), but it’s so much slower, and it also limits what the macro tool can do.
I disagree. It’s been done well before. Where Morrowind fails is only in that it doesn’t display success or failure well. If your character did an animation where they fumbled their attack, or the enemy dodged or blocked, then it would be fine. Instead you just spam attacks that all look the same but only some make your targets health bar go down.
Feedback is always critical. Instead of implementing proper feedback, Bethesda instead simplified it so they don’t have to and all attacks succeed. It still looks and feels bad, but it made it so it doesn’t need to show failures.
That’s true. It’s still on Bethesda, but yeah they could have an agreement. Skyblivion has been in development longer than this though I’m sure, and Bethesda was aware of it and said it was OK, so I’m assuming there’s no agreement like that. If there were then Bethesda would have done something that will make them look really bad, which they do tend to do so it is a possibility.
I totally agree. Morrowind gets a lot of hate for it’s combat (some deserved), but most of the time it’s people not understanding what it’s trying to do. You don’t complain in BG3 when an attack fails, and that’s the same thing Morrowind was doing. It cared about character skills, not player skill.
Yeah, if you create a scrawny character who has never held a blade, grab a dagger, run into a dungeon until you’re exhausted, then try to fight then you should miss. The later games, especially Skyrim, not caring about the character makes every playthrough feel the same and no one has a unique experience.
Morrowind needed animations to convey what was happening, but the foundation is very solid. It’s just the technology at the time limited it and it didn’t communicate what it was doing well.
OK, but you didn’t say that. You said worth the $/h, which is a common metric people use but is less than worthless.
$/h is useful because it isa universally transferable measure. Enjoyment is not, but is actually what we care about.
I’m just trying to work to remove $/h as something people discuss, because it’s ruined so many games.
$/h is a shitty metric. Some hours are more enjoyable than others, and also time is a resource we spend, just like money, not something we’re gaining, so it taking time is a negative. Enjoyment/$ is the metric to use, or maybe (enjoyment/h)/$.
$/h is a marketing term. It isn’t a term consumers should bother with. It’s what has lead to boring over-inflated games that waste your time doing things that don’t matter and aren’t fun.
Garuda is great because it comes with a tool where you can select a bunch of packages you may need (but also most won’t, so it’s not built in), then it’ll install them for you. You don’t need to search for what you’ll need because they’re listed with a description for you right on the first boot. It makes it very quick and easy to get set up, while still being Arch underneath.
Yep. Open world games usually feel like they can’t have any blank spaces, and so they waste resources filling every inch with something, even if it’s just a waste of time. You’ve always been able to run past enemies in FS games, but it took effort and you had to pay attention. The open world of ER wastes so many resources filling the open world, but also makes it trivial to not engage with. Even when there’s a collectable you want, you just ride by on Torrent, grab it, and leave. You don’t engage with it, but they expended time and money creating it.
The open world gives you a lot of distinct options, but do you really have more real ones than DS1? At the start of DS1 you have three paths (4 with the master key). In ER at the start you have three obvious paths (Stormveil, Weeping Peninsula, and Cailid) and one less obvious (going around Stormveil). I’d argue the paths of DS1 are far more interesting to engage with. The Catacombs are a design mistake though because it’s so hard to get out of. The reward for that path is very interesting for a new start (and it’s balanced for a new player, which is why Pinwheel becomes a joke at the mid-game when most people fight him), but getting out without the Lord Vessel is a huge challenge. It needs to have a TP or jump or something at the bottom to get back when you’re done.
have a tendency to drop overly long open world games randomly, even when I’m actively enjoying them. It’s a problem.
That’s not a problem. That’s a solution. If your game doesn’t actively gain anything by being open world then it just makes it tedious. I have pretty much sworn off open world games at this point. Elden Ring did alright with it, but I honestly think it was a detriment to them compared to, for example, the world of Dark Souls, which still had a lot of options but the encounters were more controlled. It sold better though, but they have become increasingly more well known with significantly more marketing, so it doesn’t mean it’s the better design.
For me, it isn’t even any of this stuff. It’s almost totally that the games are too big and take too long to get any enjoyment. Most of the time spent playing the games isn’t fun. It’s just traveling and maybe collecting garbage that doesn’t add anything to the enjoyment.
The old games were fun for every moment with the traversal. I don’t think that can carry a newer game, because it isn’t as unique anymore, but it was always more fun than riding a horse from point to point.
If they condensed the story and game down to tens of hours, I would consider it. I’m not going to play a typical Ubisoft game that takes hundreds. Even Elden Ring took me just about 100 and it was getting to the point of being too much, and it was far more interesting and fun.
The Souls games wouldn’t have happened without this either. I think both are good, but the fusion makes something special. You get all the best parts from both cultures. It’s the same for food or whatever else. Combining the best parts that different groups bring in creates something that no individual group could have done alone.
Yep. Most AAA gaming is too afraid to appeal to a specific segment of the market. They make games that everyone is supposed to like, which often ends up being uninteresting at best.
Smaller games can target a smaller audience and still be successful. They take risks and do new things, and it’ll push some people away but many will enjoy it a lot more for it.
The thing is, those reviews must be left by someone who purchased it. It’s got a self-selection bias. People purchased it presumably expecting to like it. They thought it would be a style of game they enjoyed. Most people who think it isn’t something they’ll like will just pass over it and not buy it, and obviously not effect the score.
It’s crazy to me that we don’t get games like SSX anymore. Games can’t just be a goofy fun time now, for the most part. Even indies don’t tend to do things like that.
That may because they actually don’t sell, but I doubt it. It’s just going to not make as much money, and most studios only make games with too much budget now instead of allowing smaller games to be made with less risk.
Those weren’t my comments, but I do agree with them. I like MC and Satisfactory. I don’t like NMS. I like chill games, but I don’t generally like ones that make you grind the same crap continuously for seemingly no reward or reason.
NMS is not a perfect game. People are allowed to dislike it without disliking and single specific attribute of it. I don’t like NMS probably for similar reasons to not liking Starfield. It’s just pointless junk to keep me playing longer, without any reason for me to actually do so. What am I going to get out of continuing? Seeing more similar randomly generated stuff?
To be fair, I think most of the more recent changes are just backporting engine upgrades and stuff from the new game they’re working in. That’s still a lot more effort than just saying that, but it’s not like they’re developing explicitly for NMS anymore.
It also let’s them test the upgrades in a real environment before the new game launches, preventing another mess at launch. It’s a smart use of resources, keeping people discussing how well you maintain the old game going into the new game. It’s free press, along with probably more sales.
I love Factorio, and many other games some call “job simulators.” Done well, games can feel like jobs and be good. The difference is when it feels grindy, or if it feels like you’re doing novel things and actually accomishing things. NMS just feels grindy, and like you’re doing the same thing over-and-over, without any reason to continue.
The good news is the developers are still alive. Hopefully someone has enough money to spin off a new studio free from EA and makes even better versions.