Just because some developers are bad or lazy at optimisation doesn’t make these tools bad. Unoptimized games have existed for far longer than AI upscaling tools. If I can use DLSS to still get solid framerates in new releases without needing to buy a new $2000 graphics card every two years that sounds pretty good in my book. I get why some people dislike Frame Generation as it does typically come with some input lag and is a bit of a win-more in that you need 60+ FPS in the first place for it to work well. But DLSS/FSR are good tools in my book and one of the best applications of AI.

Lune was by far my favourite to use mechanically, the stains system just made for such fun planning of rotations. There is a lot of fun with various weapon combos too, like the Potierim support build that applies Greater Slow. I personally used her as AP and buff battery with Typhoon giving everyone max AP and refreshing greater versions of all buffs every turn. And then I used Braselim with Storm Caller and Lightning Dance to farm a tier 3 Gradient every turn.

The Genesis build is AP efficient but once you have 9 every turn it gets outdamaged by Lightning Dance (single target) and Hell (AoE). Though you wouldn’t guess so going by the astronomically poor and unclear skill descriptions.

I didn’t get Medalum either but honestly you don’t need it. The one shot builds only need it pre Cheater to start in Virtuoso, after that you can just Last Chance anyway.

I couldn’t beat it “fairly” either, but approaching it as a puzzle fight where you’re trying to figure out how to deal with its bullshit is also kind of fun. I ended up stunlocking it, which in itself you can do in several different ways. The game has a lot of fun things you can do with builds.

Or just Stendhal.

What difficulty setting were you playing on? I think Story mode post nerfs should be manageable even if you get hit a lot - at least as far as main story goes.

If you want to give it another shot, invest in HP and Defense, bring a healer and build Maelle as a tank with Egide to give yourself a lot of margins and sort of grind out encounters safely. There aren’t many DPS checks - if any.

Late game you can stack so much damage on Maelle that she one-shots everything, if you like.

Its a great game and worth trying to finish. Now as far as the optional superboss… Yeah, that’s another story.

Phenomenal game. Great action gameplay and super cool and interesting world building. Must play if you like SCPs. Also acts as a sort of intermediary between Alan Wake 1 and 2.

Make sure you play the Mankind Divided DLCs after! A Criminal Past in particular is probably the best “new Deus Ex” content they ever put out.

Also, congrats on being made a mod! I literally cannot think of a better person for the role.

If the recent pathetic patent filings were not enough to finally wake you up to what an awful company Nintendo are I don’t know what to tell you.

Feels like this is the key part of the article:

But I think the passage of time has obscured just how much most of these critiques also applied to the original (and beloved) Hollow Knight. While Silksong’s bosses might be a little tougher, and its jumping challenges a little more precise, its predecessor was also often unforgiving and gated in almost the exact same ways (though some of this difficulty was eventually rebalanced). Only 22 percent of Hollow Knight’s Steam players have obtained the “Hollow Knight” achievement for reaching the first of the game’s multiple endings, and I’m willing to bet most of the remainder gave up out of frustration rather than boredom.

I’ve said this before but… what exactly were people expecting? I guess lots of people who never played HK jumped on the Silksong hype train just because the diehard fans were so rabid about it, and are now shocked at how hard the game they thought they were supposed to want turned out to be?

The exploration and level design too! Nothing gives you quite the same rush of dopamine as unlocking shortcuts in Dark Souls. The first time you kick that ladder? Priceless.

Cyberpunk modding scene is incredible, the only sad thing is that while 2.0 was an incredible patch it did break a lot of old and amazing mods. Scissors was an absolute GOAT and stuff like Vehicle Combat, Breach Takedown and Drone Companions were just incredible.

I finished Samurai Jack: Battle Through Time and had a good time with it. Short, old-school feeling chill action game. Probably a must-play if you’re a fan of the show, otherwise keep an eye out for Epic giveaways or just pirate it if you think it looks cool. It’s not that long, probably 8 hours or so with some cool looking levels and the combat gets pretty fun once you start unlocking skills.

Being unable to resist my recent hyperfixation I went back and started playing through Ninja Gaiden 2 Black with the White mod installed. Still playing on Warrior to have an apples-to-apples comparison. 6 Chapters in now and it feels like a halfway point between vanilla NG2B and OG NG2 so far. Apart from a handful of fights actually being harder in this version it mostly is easier and less dense in fights. There are still places that are empty where there should be fights, I still turn the corner sometimes expecting a fight I remember and being met with silence instead. Having said that, not every omission is negative - the jellyfish bombs in Venice for example I didn’t really miss.

Also - and I can’t understate this - the game is fucking beautiful. Not only is it visually stunning with the lighting and the blood physics and textures and raytracing and 120 FPS HDR - it is also impressive from an art direction standpoint. It feels just like the original, only sharper. It looks like what the original looked like in my head when I thought back on it. Sometimes remasters or remakes lose the original identity, but here they absolutely nailed it.

So far I’m having a blast with it, even though it doesn’t quite deliver that “playable cocaine” vibe that the original was constantly feeding you.

Let’s hope so, because this sounds like it could be pretty disastrous doesn’t it? But who’s gonna afford challenging Nintendo?

I imagine a non-insignificant portion of Silksong players never played HK and just jumped on the hype bandwagon. Which makes sense considering it was built up like it would literally pay off your mortgage and reunite you with your high school sweetheart.

Literally sackable offense.

To be fair Ninja Gaiden Black did also have boss runbacks. It’s one of a handful of small complaints I have about what is otherwise a very close to perfect game (Chapter 9 in the military base being one of the others).

But NG2 did have boss checkpoints, yes, and was much better for it. Even the notoriously player-challenging Itagaki realised after one game that boss runbacks sucked, and this was in 2008 - Demon Souls wasn’t even out.

To each their own, I always think of difficulty and challenge as proportional and relative to the individual. You can just as easily turn the question around the other way: how can you feel any satisfaction beating a Souls game using magic and summons and level ups and items when there are people who have beat it at Level 1 hitless and using a dance pad instead of controller? What’s “appropriately challenging” is way too individual for the bluntness of a single difficulty setting.

And coming up with solutions isn’t even that hard. Add some sliders to adjust the length of parry windows and i-frames on dodge rolls and whatnot and you’re probably a good part of the way there. Gameplay intact, people still go through the same motions they just have a chance now even if they don’t have the reflexes or timing for frame-perfect inputs.

Yes indeed, when arcade games were the norm devs specifically designed for absurd difficulty ramp ups and cheap deaths to finagle another quarter out of you.

Mandragora had the exact same difficulty system, you could adjust enemy HP, Damage and even Stamina cost at every bonfire. Great accessibility feature.

Damn they sold out huh.

Not everything that makes the game harder or more challenging to play is good game design though, and a game shouldn’t get a free pass just because its developers stated “well the game being hard is part of our artistic vision”. It’s fine to criticise things, even - or actually maybe especially - things we like. We don’t have to be binary about things, we can like something while still recognising its flaws.

Excessive runbacks for example is something that is primarily concerned with disrespecting your time as a player and even FromSoft seem to have realised that they’re not a good addition or a fun way of increasing difficulty seeing as they introduced Stakes of Marika in Elden Ring. Hell, even Ninja Gaiden went away from boss runbacks starting from the second game, and that came out in 2008!

I have no idea what people were expecting to be honest. Hollow Knight was already known for being an extremely difficult game with punishing anti-fun elements like runbacks and corpse runs. Which game had everyone played that got them so hyped for Silksong?

There’s a reason I stayed away from HK, and I will be staying away from Silksong too. Game looks great but I won’t be able to beat it and I won’t have any fun failing to do so.

I’m thirding Alien: Isolation, one of the best horror games ever made and a really loving tribute to the movies as well. On console they even had a feature where the alien listened in on you through the microphone and would hear if you made a noise. Not sure how it played out in practice as I didn’t play it on console but sounds rad.

The Outlast games are also frequently brought up as great horror games. I haven’t played them myself but have seen them played by others. Look pretty good, though a little more jumpscare heavy. Still atmospheric though.

Well, I was merely speaking in general, I didn’t actually buy Silksong! 😅 The combination of being prohibitively difficult and having tons of tricky platforming (I hate platforming) means I’m just doing like with Hollow Knight and staying away to save myself the frustration.

To each their own, but when I played through Blasphemous just recently it felt like the game had tons of design elements intended to either piss you off or deliberately waste your time or both.

The 2D sidescroller base that’s at the foundation of Metroidvanias is quite a bit older than that, though, so I think it’s fair to call it an older genre. Even though it is fairly evergreen.

Buying on GOG is always the play whenever the option is available.

If you can stomach it it’s still for sale on Epic I’m pretty sure. Otherwise yeah, Ms Fitgirl provides, and I did use her services this time.

I think 2 is almost equally or more of a masterpiece as 3 when considering how extremely rare truly branching path story games are.

Alan Wake 2 is one of my favourite games of all time, and if you like the story it’s definitely worth considering playing. Yes, it is a bit more of a horror game, but it’s phenomenal. I recommend watching a recap of Control and its AWE DLC, as they directly tie into the plot of Alan Wake 2. Or just play them, Control is also a great game.

If you really truly can’t stomach horror games, both Welonz and Mapocolops have great AW2 playthroughs.

I finished Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge. Despite everything, I’m very happy to have finished the whole trilogy. I’ve become quite fond of this series, and I’m already very keen on going back and playing NGB and NG2 again sometime soon. Especially curious to compare the Ninja Gaiden 2 White mod with the original NG2 experience.

NG3RE is a bad game. I could rant about it for hours. It has one of the worst stories I’ve ever had the displeasure of experiencing, and in attempting to be a “story focused” game it actively gets in the way of your enjoyment constantly. The level design is uninspired and the enemy variety is terrible. It’s a QTE-infested fuckfest, its extremely solid combat system isn’t even allowed to shine due to poor gameplay design and it has the worst bosses in the whole series - a series that was already infamous for bad bosses, by the way. That final boss was an absolute shitshow and I can’t believe I made it through. Had I not saved up all the Max HP upgrades in the skill tree to use as health potions in the final fight I wouldn’t have been able to. Also, they actually had the game end on a fucking QTE.

If you must play it to see the whole series, install this mod, set Ninpo generation to 1.5, damage multiplier to 1.35 and enemy block rate reduction to 85. I played around with it a bit and it actually makes the combat feel alright and lets you mostly ignore Steel On Bone QTE instakills and heal with Ninpo instead, as well as actually play around with your combo strings to kill enemies.

To follow, and continuing my Itagaki journey I found out he and some other Ninja Gaiden 2 people in the Soleil studio made the game Samurai Jack: Battle Through Time. So I’ve started playing that now, and you know what? It’s actually kinda good. Feels a bit like a throwback to old school games with pickups on the ground and collectibles, and you can even sense some of the Ninja Gaiden lineage in the combat. Much less demanding and intense though - granted I’m only playing on Normal difficulty. It starts out a little slow but once you start unlocking new moves and functions in the skill tree the combat starts opening up and feel pretty good and fun.

It’s not going to be a GOTY contender but I’d say it’s worth your time. I never watched the cartoon but they apparently got both the original creator and show writers as well as voice cast on board. Love the art style too and it’s had some cool levels thus far. Bosses have been decent, not too hard. Recommended if you need a short chill action game, and doubly so if you’re a Samurai Jack fan I assume.

Admittedly it’s been a while since I played D:OS2, but I enjoyed that combat system quite a lot. No random success chance felt good, the action economy was more interesting and the skills had more freedom and interesting effects because they didn’t have to stick to existing 5E material. Magic/physical armor was an interesting strategic factor to play around and combat mostly felt good - although yes, it did frequently and infamously devolve into elemental surface spam.

Writing wise it’s all still in the patented Larian tone, which is sometimes funny but frequently unserious and sort of Marvel-esque for better or worse. I didn’t mind it as much in DOS2, but I was quite a few years younger when I played it. The romance sucked in that game too but at least one positive is I don’t remember every companion throwing themselves at you in a pathetic display of wish fulfillment protagonist-sexuality writing like they do in BG3.

Ironically much like BG3, the third act of E33 is a mess. There is a ton of important side content with character moments and lore, particularly relating to Clea but also the whole Maelle relationship quest. But the pacing is completely off, it’s all presented as optional and it just feels very rushed. A “Definitive Edition” type patch or DLC that retools and restructures Act 3 would do E33 a world of good.

The gameplay is good, but being shackled to D&D 5E is not ideal. I have a lot of issues with the writing of the game in general, Act 3 is also very bad. It’s still a great game, it’s just that people frequently claim it’s the best game of all time and I think that’s overrating it.

I love it! I don’t know why but game cartridges always had a much better feel to them than disks to me. Could just be nostalgia for the times, though. But I recently dug out my 3DS and there is just something so satisfying about the click of inserting a game.

Yeah, BG3 isn’t a truly branching path game in the way something like Witcher 2 for example is.

They’re very different games, in my opinion. If “bang for your buck” is most important then BG3 has objectively more content. It’s way longer, has way more side content and can support many playthroughs.

I think BG3 is a very good game, but it is not perfect and it is somewhat overrated. It’s a great game, but not the best game ever. It has a fair share of flaws, and while the writing is fine it’s still very much videogamey.

Expedition 33 is more of a work of art. It still has its problems too, but at all the critical points it delivers in spades. It’s got a great cast of characters, beautiful art direction and a story with resonant themes that will hit home with most people. Plus one of the best soundtracks of all time. It’s got fantastic presentation, some incredible set pieces and moments and phenomenal voice acting, direction and facial expressions. Even though the game is turn-based, the implementation of active elements like Parry and Dodge will feel very familiar to you coming from Elden Ring. In fact, one of the gameplay designers used to be a Sekiro speedrunner, and it shows.

From your frame of reference BG3 is more like Skyrim I’d say, in that it can almost be your “forever-game”. People put thousands of hours into it over dozens of playthroughs and it has a very vivid modding scene. Expedition 33 is all about that one, cinematic impactful playthrough. Maybe you play it a second time to pick up on foreshadowing and stuff like that.

For me personally I had a great time playing BG3, but I will eventually forget about it. I spent fewer hours in Expedition 33, but the experience will stay with me way longer.

I love my backlog. I’ve got probably 30 games purchased at all-time lows sitting ready as a 5-star menu ready to browse whenever I finish playing something. I get to scroll through it as if running my finger across the backs of great novels lined up in an extensive library, looking at them one at a time and thinking “hm, what am I in the mood for right now?”. It’s an additional pleasure on top of just playing the game for me. Even just thinking about it from time to time and knowing I have it ready for the future, like Metro: Exodus that I will get to one day. I am a pleasure delayer.

Anytime! I love these games and love both talking about them and helping out so just @ me or DM me or whatever works best for you when the time comes.

This is absolutely insane. Move over Skyblivion, we have a new king in town.

I would say I’m medium skilled in the genre. I’ve beaten the Dark Souls games and Elden Ring and also played some 2D Soulslikes, most recently Mandragora and Blasphemous. I like the Soulslike aspect more than the platforming, which I hate. So I stayed away form Hollow Knight for example.