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I haven’t played the remaster so I can’t guarantee this will work, depending on what has changed, but ironically levelling up more might be the solution you need here. If the level scaling is still as completely fucked as it was in the original, the enemies should get stronger pretty quick. If you only level non-combat stuff they should get to a point that you find appropriate
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJHXe_9uhxw
Here’s the teaser, since they reformed the team with a new name so it might not be easy to find. I think this is the only thing they’ve released about it so far, which doesn’t really tell us much other than that they’re making something, but honestly I’m just excited to see more from them. It being published by Epic suggests to me that it’ll come to PC, which is a relief for me because I don’t have a console
That’s totally fair! I’m very much of the opinion that while From’s soulslikes are great and much less insurmountable (a word I choose carefully — they are difficult, but they can be learned) than their reputation suggests, that still doesn’t mean that everyone will actually find them fun. If the combat isn’t to your taste then that’s an entirely reasonable position. Elden Ring is particularly demanding in terms of the pace of combat compared to the Souls games as well
Shadow of the Colossus is such an incredible game. I think it was the first game I played that showed me that games could do more than just being fun to play. It wasn’t the first to attempt to do that, certainly, but it was the first to show that to me and it has stuck in my memory ever since. The soundtrack is phenomenal too. Have you seen that the dev team teased a new game late last year?
I beat every boss in base game Elden Ring without parrying once, using melee only, and no ashes or player summons either (I summoned NPCs a few times if it was an NPC I liked or an interesting story, which meant summoning them for Morgott, Fire Giant, and the two gargoyles). I even got Malenia, eventually! I don’t say this as a brag, because I am NOT good at these games. I say it to say that if I can do it, basically anyone can.
I think it’s a matter of mindset. You’ve got to go in psychologically prepared to fail a over and over again, and you’ve got to be analytical enough to figure out why you failed. If you’re really struggling with a boss, maybe don’t even try to attack for a couple of runs, just focus on figuring out when to dodge and when you have windows. Maybe your current weapon isn’t the right one for the job because it’s a bit too slow to hit this boss or it does a damage type that the boss resists. Maybe you just need to go somewhere else for a bit and come back with more vigour and a better weapon. Elden Ring is really good for letting you do that.
Obviously that’s not going to be a process that everyone enjoys, and if someone doesn’t enjoy it that’s totally fair enough. It’s a game, we’re all just here to have fun. But the actual skill floor is one almost everyone can achieve if they want to and approach it ready to experiment and learn
Based on your enjoyment of management and strategy, Paradox’s grand strategy games might be something you enjoy. Same publisher as Cities Skylines. There are four main series of them, each with their own mechanics but enough broad-scale similarities that knowing one helps with the others. They are:
- Crusader Kings, set in medieval Europe, North Africa, and about half of Asia. This one is the most roleplay-heavy, as you play as a succession of characters within a feudal dynasty rather than a country
- Europa Universalis, set from the European Renaissance up to the end of the Napoleonic wars. The whole world is playable, and exploration is a big mechanic
- Victoria, which covers the world through the rise of industrialism. This one is the most simulation-heavy, focusing gameplay around economic development and the diplomatic manoeuvring of great powers
- Hearts of Iron, which is the Second World War game. This is the one to go for if you want to play the military side of things
What distinguishes them from strategy games like Civ and Age of Empires is the greatly-reduced abstraction. There’s no expectation of every starting point or playable country being balanced; if you start as Belgium in Hearts of Iron, you’re going to have to do something clever to not get steamrolled by Germany. There’s also no win condition beyond what you set for yourself. When I start a game of Crusader Kings, I’m not trying to win the game, I’m saying to myself “let’s see if I can unite all of Britain and Ireland under a Gaelic ruler”
All Paradox games have quite a lot of DLC, but the base games are solid (often now including several of the earlier DLCs for free, in the case of older games) and they go on steep sales pretty often. If there’s not a specific time period or mechanic that sways you towards one of the games, I recommend Crusader Kings 3 for the best new player experience
I’d also add that CK3 is a step above most Paradox games in terms of beginner-friendliness. Everything has a tooltip defining what it does, and most of the game-specific words in that tooltip have tooltips of their own. It’s not like the older games and their “lol keep the wiki open and good fucking luck” approach to explaining themselves
I’m not the person that you asked, but I do hold the same opinion. My biggest reasons are:
- Civs are far more incentivised to expand in VI, resulting in more conflict
- Districts make city placement a much more complicated question
- The city state influence game is much more interesting than just a spending race and also has more game-changing rewards
- The culture and science victories are much more interactive with other civs now, rather than just hiding away and waiting for a bar to fill
I don’t think V is bad by any means. It was the one that got me into the series after bouncing off III and IV. I just think that most of the changes in VI were improvements
There are a lot of paid mods for the original AC, so I expect that will be part of it. However, I do think that there are two other reasons for the devs to want to host a platform of their own:
- Being able to remove content ripped from other games, which will help keep them out of trouble
- Giving users the option to automatically download the mods necessary to join a multiplayer game
Ahh, that thing about the editions tracks with when I was playing on the tabletop. There were a couple of necron armies in the group I played with and they were always right stubborn bastards to put down. They didn’t hit that hard, but you sure as hell had to hit them hard if you wanted to make any headway
I’m not exactly up to date on my 40k lore, do the necrons have some kind of disposable chaff unit now? Back when I played they were the tankiest army in the entire game, which definitely doesn’t work for a game in which you are usually carving through a massive mob
::: Space Marine 2 spoilers I was, of course, pretty gutted that they never showed up in the latter part of the campaign. I was playing through the campaign with a friend that doesn’t know the setting much but who loves Terminator, and the instant I saw the signs of necron stuff going on I thought I was going to get to see him become Power Armour Kyle Reese :::
I did play it! But I found the significantly lower usage of level scaling made it much less of a problem. Like… it is still a car crash of a system, but I don’t have to compete with the fact that every enemy in the world is scaled to challenge me if I a) levelled perfectly and b) put every level into combat skills
The random hit chance thing is a separate issue though
I tried that once, found it too tedious, and just stopped levelling up instead
There is a group that’s remaking Morrowind in Skyrim, but I have absolutely no idea how far along they are https://tesrskywind.com/
The start of Tunic being basically the exact same as Dark Souls made me laugh once I reaised what it was doing. “Here, take your rubbish weapon and your dodge roll and go ring two important bells in opposite directions from here. It’s important for saving the world.”
Tunic late-ish game spoilers
Holy shit the reveal of the endless rows of trapped ghost fox things was jaw-dropping. I think it worked even better specifically because of the adorable art style
That sounds fascinating! I’m pretty tolerant of jank in games if they’re doing something engaging, and while I do enjoy the combat systems of the Souls games I am totally okay with a more abstracted system. Hell I love Paradox’s grand strategy games, and this sounds a lot like how battles work in those — the meaningful decision is in which fights you pick and how you prepare for them rather than your actions within the fight itself.
I’d be really interested to see an action RPG type game that just embraces the real-life scale of the world and lets you screw about with the rate of time passing like in Kerbal Space Program when you’re walking a long way. You’d have to limit the scale of the story to make it manageable to develop, but I think there’s the potential for something cool in there. Maybe there are only two or three villages in one valley, but they’re all full villages and they’re actually several kilometres apart. Make sure that whatever goals you have are time-gated in some way so that you actually have to weigh up whether you can afford to walk to the other village, because even though you fast-forward it so that it only takes a minute of real-life time to walk there it’s actually most of the day in-game.
Though I think you need 4. A human-ish one first, a four-legged bestial one, and a flying one, before the final one. Then the priest and crew arrive, and the end happens.
Oh, I was including what happens after the priest (whose name is Lord Emon, now that I have actually gone to check because I certainly didn’t remember) as one of the colossus battles. Just trying not to openly spoil a nearly 20-year-old game for some reason I guess. My concern is that the value of the colossus battles in the game comes largely in the form of puzzle-solving, something that won’t translate to film very easily. In the game, the fights don’t advance the narrative much. The deteriorating state of Wander and some of the environmental cues do, but neither of those require the actual fight to be shown in full. We need one fight to set up the nature and danger of Wander’s task, at least one more to make tangible that he has to do a bunch of these and they’re all differently dangerous, and the confrontation with Emon because that’s the conclusion to the story.
David Lowery (The Green Knight)
That’s a brilliant suggestion, that film was exactly what would be needed to adapt this game. I don’t have… well, much of any hope for the guy who is actually attached to it, but I suppose it’s unfair to judge him too hard before we have any idea of if or how it will actually happen
I think you could do a fair bit by following the priest and his soldiers that are chasing Wander more than the game did. He can provide exposition to the soldiers as they travel, seeing more and more pillars of light in the distance as they do so. Have some banter along the way to get us to like one or two or the soldiers as well. Play up this party’s protagonist energy.
In the meantime, let Wander talk to Dormin more. Dormin remains honest and helpful throughout the game, so I think you could easily add in concern for Wander and curioisity about why he’s doing what he is doing. “What a strange, fascinating little mortal. We do hope he knows what he’s doing.”
I suppose you could probably only show maybe three colossus fights max, including the ending. Picking which ones get done in full would be tough. First one almost certainly has to be on the list. I think the giant flying serpent in the desert is probably the best one visually, so that’d be my other pick
It’s normal for CG artists to do their best to make their work look like real life and not CG, though. Death Stranding is clearly attempting to look as realistic as they can manage