PWB February

Play

Tokyo Mirage Sessions - The only things I don't like much about this are the general lack of polish, there's too many menus and traversing around can be a bit of pain sometimes, especially if you want to do sidequests (which don't even seem to record in a journal as far as I can tell, thankfully most of them seem pointless so ignore like you should most jrpg sidequests tbh). It feels like a poor man's Persona 5 as unfair a comparison as that may be, which is a shame because it's not lacking in its original ideas or identity even though it's blending two series into one.

Reiterating the Idol song scenes/music videos are so good.

Granblue Fantasy - If Aniki is putting Princess Connect I will put the gacha I'm playing, and for my money (literally in this games case ho ho), the best one I've played, as grindy as it is. Put some serious time into levelling up my Light Grid but now I've got the upcoming Earth and Water events coming up, it's a massive timesink but it's the most rewarding timesink of the genre for me. We had a Demon Slayer event recently that's sadly ended but we got Tanjiro for Water(and the other two chuckfucks), Shinobu for Wind and Rengoku for Fire…they're REALLY good for free SSR Event characters and if you've seen Demon Slayer I think you'd have enjoyed the event.

In terms of crossovers Granblue has done, I think it's my favourite yet but they've done a crazy amount including some of these:

Code Geass
Love Live
Street Fighter
Attack on Titan
Persona 5
'Tales of..'
Shadowverse
Princess Connect :)

And more, but it's missing one…one big RPG franchise that has an MMO, hmmmmmm, can't put my finger on it right now, huh. (I man COME ON the two series share very similar races, look at Charlotta in Granblue and a Lalafell in FFXIV)

Want

How the fuck is the first Atelier Ryza game still full price? The sequel just came out! I want to play a comfy alchemist game! :(

Bin

Garwoofoo

Bin: Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales - I should like this, right? I like deckbuilding card games, I enjoyed Witcher 3, I liked playing Gwent in that game, this should be right up my street. Bounced off it hard, sadly. The "gameplay" consists of trundling a small person round a map very slowly getting stuck on trees and rocks, listening to northerners chunter on in the way they do, until occasionally you (finally!) trigger an event that lets you play Gwent. But all the games of Gwent in this have wacky twists, like being one round or three cards or something, and I don't think I've actually been allowed to play a regular game at all yet. Most of the time I'm just following instructions, or trying to solve card puzzles. Binned. Deleted.

cavalcade

Sounds like a modern day reimagining of MTG: Shandalar. I'm in.

martTM

Slay the Spire came out on Android yesterday. Play that instead.

Garwoofoo

I've put hundreds of hours into Slay the Spire on various platforms, I was looking for something new but yes, I'm in a card game sort of mood.

The last upgrade to The Lord of the Rings Adventure Card Game caused the game to lose all my progress. Been wrangling with the devs on Discord (shudder) for days now trying to work out why. So I can't play that one. Shame as it's just been revived and is getting new content shortly.

Monster Train's kept me entertained for a good while though, that's superb. Might have to just crack on with that one.

martTM

Armello is on phone and it's great. I never understand why more people didn't like it.

cavalcade

Why not literally just play a good card game. Magic Arena, Hearthstone, Runetera….

Garwoofoo

Aren't all three of those just bottomless money-pits though? I don't really want to end up spending loads of money on imaginary cards - or, conversely, losing repeatedly against those who have.

Alastor

Anyone play Shadowverse?

cavalcade

Magic Arena and Hearthstone are possible to play quite easily for free. I'd recommend Limited/Draft as a relatively low investment way of playing the game, though the current set in MTG (Kaldheim) is mechanically very difficult. The core sets in Magic are a better place to jump in. Hearthstone is pretty easy to get into - but it's not as sophisticated a game as MTG.

MTG Arena has just come to Android too in early access - though Hearthstone is the better mobile game.

Slay the Spire is just a deckbuilder with a game welded on. MTG is the best deckbuilding game in the world by a country mile. I like Slay but it has a shelf life. I've played MTG for about 8 years now.

martTM

Personally, I'd much prefer something with a shelf life. Games as a service seem to just drain my time, my energy and my patience… it's that constant FOMO fear, the worry that if you stop then you're going to miss out. It's why I haven't bothered playing New Horizons in months, because it's been so long and it felt like it was time spent for the sake of time.

These days, particularly on mobile, I just want a game to play. Not something to invest myself in, not something that's going to be constantly on my mind, not something I feel inclined to look at from when I wake up (see also: fuck social media) and preferably not something that involves other real people. Just gimme a game to play.

I suspect I forgot to mention that I finally fucked Pokémon Go, Idle Apocalypse and Idle Mastermind straight in the bin. I just don't have that kind of energy any more.

cavalcade

It's not a game as a service. People have been playing MTG since 1993. Arena is a digital way to play it, but I also play Commander with friends with real cards and often draft at the nearby FLGS. One big benefit over Hearthstone is that MTG is also a real, paper game.

It's a language you can learn to play with people anywhere. I played MTG with people in France when we both barely spoke each other's language. I play with my kids. I often take decks with me when working away from home and will pop into a shop for some Friday Night Magic if I can.

It's like learning chess. It's a shared language with a massive community of people worldwide. And MTG is infinitely deep. The things people like about Slay the Spire are aspects that have kept a community engaged for 20+ years - card evaluation, card synergy etc…. It's something you have to keep learning too - each new set has a learning curve. You listen to Limited Resources, watch LSV stream drafts, chat shit to your friends, get wrecked at the local shop, or some weeks draft the most perfect deck and sweep all before you. Of course it's designed to keep you spending money, but there are plenty of formats like Pauper or Commander that can have low cost entry points. And Limited/Draft costs 12 quid or so for an evening, but I would think it's laughable if anyone here baulked at that, considering the amount of money spunked away here on random tat.

I don't think anyone has to play a TCG or CCG but a lot of people professing their love for Slay are essentially Magic players. They just don't know it yet.

Ninchilla

Play
Hitman 3 is life.
…not for the targets, obviously.

D&D - the group I DM for managed to restrain themselves from killing or enslaving the group of merchants they rescued from a goblin assault (despite the rogue continuing to ask how much hp they had), so we'll call that character growth.

The group I play in are currently mid-dungeon crawl, which might be my least favourite style of D&D. Not having a map to look at only exacerbates the problem, as I start to lose track of where anything is, and my own attempts at mapping the place out were… not overly helpful in that regard. Note to self: draw to scale next time.

Want
The next big thing I know I want is Horizon Forbidden West, but I also want a PS5 for it, so… hah. I find myself still firmly on the fence for Mass Effect Legendary Edition.

To play some board games - I'm hankering for another crack at Star Wars Rebellion, and I'm always hungry for more Nemesis. I think partly I just miss being able to get people around a table, antisocial as I am.

Bin
Pandemic, Tories, the usual.

martTM

It's not a game as a service. People have been playing MTG since 1993. Arena is a digital way to play it, but I also play Commander with friends with real cards and often draft at the nearby FLGS. One big benefit over Hearthstone is that MTG is also a real, paper game.

It's a language you can learn to play with people anywhere. I played MTG with people in France when we both barely spoke each other's language. I play with my kids. I often take decks with me when working away from home and will pop into a shop for some Friday Night Magic if I can.

It's like learning chess. It's a shared language with a massive community of people worldwide. And MTG is infinitely deep. The things people like about Slay the Spire are aspects that have kept a community engaged for 20+ years - card evaluation, card synergy etc…. It's something you have to keep learning too - each new set has a learning curve. You listen to Limited Resources, watch LSV stream drafts, chat shit to your friends, get wrecked at the local shop, or some weeks draft the most perfect deck and sweep all before you. Of course it's designed to keep you spending money, but there are plenty of formats like Pauper or Commander that can have low cost entry points. And Limited/Draft costs 12 quid or so for an evening, but I would think it's laughable if anyone here baulked at that, considering the amount of money spunked away here on random tat.

I don't think anyone has to play a TCG or CCG but a lot of people professing their love for Slay are essentially Magic players. They just don't know it yet.

You're talking as though I haven't played MTG. I have. I own a few decks. I enjoyed it. But I definitely don't have the time or the energy for it, and keeping up with the Joneses on cards isn't cheap. Plus, all the cards here are in German (which we discovered when we went to a draft event at the board game shop down the road).

I'm specifically talking about games on mobile here. I play plenty of physical games. Hearthstone is very much a game as a service. So's MTG Arena.

Garwoofoo

Plus, all the cards here are in German (which we discovered when we went to a draft event at the board game shop down the road).

YOU LIVE IN GERMANY

martTM

(looks around)

SHIT WHEN DID THAT HAPPEN WHAT YEAR IS IT WHO IS THE PRESIDENT

cavalcade

Nobody:
Literally nobody:
Mart: I'm in Germany

I think there's many different flavours of GaS models. Egregious shit like Battlefront through to more benign stuff like Valorant or MTG. It is possible on MTG to draft infinitely if you're good enough. Or just play with your friends using the prebuilt decks you get given. Perhaps you pitch in a fiver now and again to do a draft if you can't get to a real one. GaS is anything with a continued revenue model, for sure, but the application of it varies significantly. My argument with MTG is it's a bit like saying playing football since you were 10 is a GaS model as you've had to buy boots, football kit and your parents have had to pay for petrol to take you to clubs.

And more specifically this was a point to Garwoofoo or indeed the many people who love Slay the Spire. The bit they love is the bit they can play and save time with. Dedicating 100s of hours to Slay probably benefits deckbuilding and card evaluation in some way, but Slay will be gone one day and those 100s of hours invested in it will be lost. Slay is also slow - the bits people like (the building a powerful deck bit) is simply Limited in MTG slowed down to a crawl (with stuff like an opponent and bluffing taken out). Objectively Slay is a clever wrapper around something that has entertained people for almost 30 years. If you like that core loop, and want that feeling for real surrounded by people, or digitally, MTG offers it. If you want to up the skill and reduce randomness then drafting in MTG has a far higher floor than Slay. If you've spent 100 hours on Slay, you could've spent 100 hours on Arena (or playing MTG for real) and invested some of the sunk financial and time into that and come out with more at the end of it. Yes, you're piling money into a GaS (or ongoing revenue generating model for WOTC) but there is a subversion with MTG of a purely digital money-sink paradigm. It's not like you could spend 50 hours refining your skill in Slay and then pop to a board game store for an evening of drafting and make a new friend or whatever. Yes, they may well wear a fedora, but you never know.

What Slay and LOTR are, are mild cannabis when you could be injecting meth into your penis. You might not want to do that, for German mart reasons, but that option is there. I think Gar just needs to be handed the needle and he'd be gone.

Garwoofoo

Ah, you're probably right. I've dug out a copy of the core set for the Lord of the Rings card game that we'd never really got stuck into for whatever reason, and it's brilliant, even trying to construct a deck using the basic cards you're given to start with is fantastic fun. I'm actually a bit scared by something like MTG, you're absolutely right in that it's potentially something I could really lose myself in (/bankrupt myself with).

Anyway, on a different note:

Play: XCOM 2. On the Switch. Like a lot of Switch ports these days, this is a bit like a dog riding a bicycle, it's very impressive that it's even happening but you know deep down that it was never really meant to be this way. Still: it's XCOM 2! On the Switch! And it runs tolerably well, maybe slightly better in handheld than in docked for some reason but it's the whole game plus all the expansions on a portable and the style of game can accommodate the odd technical hiccup so actually I'm pretty pleased with this.

It's frickin' hard though: after getting wiped out in the tutorial mission I dropped the difficulty to Easy and I'm getting my arse handed to me slightly less often, though still fairly regularly. I am not a clever man.

Smellavision

I was a MTG person when they launched, have a few boxes of cards still and a few foil packs unopened - all worthless, I’ve checked. Back in the early 90’s there was no one else to play with outside of the comic shop, so it fell by the wayside.

I have though, gone all in on the LOTR LCG cards - the most recent expansion as eluded me because of lockdown, but I probably spend more time playing it online (Tabletop Simulator) than I do playing it IRL.

cavalcade

[hands Gar a needle]
[points at his penis]

Do it.

Brian Bloodaxe

This is where football talk has brought us.

Alastor

I tried to like Xcom 2 but the timed missions were kinda anti fun after a while.

cavalcade

Chimera is on sale. That's kind of Xcom 2 for people who like the idea of Xcom 2 but want less Xcom 2.

It's shorter though so you'll have finished it before I'm done writing this….

Dammit Alastor.

luscan

I tried to like Xcom 2 but the timed missions were kinda anti fun after a while.

If you got it on PC you can mod them. Mods are great. You can straight up make X Com into a star wars total conversion of rebels vs empire. It's neat.

Alastor

If you can mod it to be anime then call me!

Speaking of which, I'd love for someone to try Fire Emblem: Three Houses one day, it really is a good game. It's been a while since it was the hot new thing on the Switch but I don't think it's got any worse with time, I don't think anything after it has bettered what it did From the character building and then the strategy gameplay itself, easily the best game since the pre Awakening games came and turned the series into a waifu simulator. (though still good games I guess).

Speaking of which..I beat Tokyo Mirage Sessions at last. Yet another 'good but not great' RPG after Tokyo Xanadu. I was thinking on what exactly made Tokyo Xanadu and this so underwhelming compared to Cold Steel/Persona 3, 4 and 5 and I think it it's the lack of railroading/focus on story. Persona 5 has bits where for stretches of the game you don't even go into Mememtos/Palaces because of the story and maybe they overdid it sometimes but I think it's less harmful than being undercooked. I know 'less story = bad' is kinda obvious but looking back I just appreciate the way P5 does things even more now, all those stretches of in game time you're not allowed to dungeon crawl are actually important it turns out!

As much as I enjoyed the game, if you haven't played Persona there's no reason to play this over any of them . Such a shame because as I said, it's got a really neat take on the Shin Megami battle system, the designs really are on point and I like the Fire Emblem influences on the game.

Tomorrow, I will playing with Alchemy in Atelier Ryza (if this game comes back into print/stock and/or sale please PM each other or something because I don't wanna' know lol). I hope this is as good and comfy as everyone says because I can't take another good rpg trapped in a mediocre game's body holy shit, if that happens it'll be three in a row. I just want to make BOMBS out of MUSHROOMS (it's alchemy I don't gotta explain shit) and blow up rabbits with the bombs I dun made, please god.

cavalcade

Alastor really has that "parent living vicariously through child at sporting event as he stands on the sideline with a blown out knee and a tear in his eye" vibe for me. GO ON SON.

Ninchilla

It's a rare day when I've heard of anything Alastor plays. I feel so mainstream.

cavalcade

I sometimes feel like the two male band members in Pale Waves.

feltmonkey

I've never even heard of Pale Waves. :(

Alastor

*https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/a_realm_reborn/game/#!/land

Atelier Ryza is good! Finally some good fucking food!

Take all the Disciple of the Land* and Hand** classes from FFXIV (think literally all of them are represented here) into one, put it in a pretty Dragon Quest esque cutesy wrapper with the Final Fantasy traditional ATB battle system and you have this game. So far I've mostly just making trips back and forth from the first island to Ryza's house (which is pretty fast and convenient) to make my own gears and equipment (customizable without being too complex for now) and I've really enjoyed it. It just really nails that feeling of putting work into something and getting results out of it.

A good example of this is how I got my ass kicked by a giant weasel, went away to gather some ingredients, made my own gear then came back and destroyed him. Combat by the way is fun, basically Final Fantasy ATB style with it's own mechanics, kinda wish it had a mode that stops the ATB until you've made a decision though, but oh well.

**https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/a_realm_reborn/game/#!/hand

cavalcade

I've never even heard of Pale Waves. :(

Started off as a female rip off of The 1975. Now a rip off of 00s Avril Lavigne. Lead singer is full goth. The boys in the band look like uncomfortable freshers in a first year halls of resident mixer in Leicestershire.

Brian Bloodaxe

Sounds great. Like Frosties.

Garwoofoo

Atelier Ryza is good! Finally some good fucking food!

Looked this up as I didn't know what it was. Apparently it's the twenty-first main game in the Atelier series. Yep, I'm in an Alastor thread.

feltmonkey

I've never even heard of Pale Waves. :(

Started off as a female rip off of The 1975. Now a rip off of 00s Avril Lavigne. Lead singer is full goth. The boys in the band look like uncomfortable freshers in a first year halls of resident mixer in Leicestershire.

Yeah, I looked them up, and they seem to be completely bizarre. Their music is to the poppier side of Avril Lavigne. They're the poppier side of Carly Rae Jepson, to be honest. Produced to a completely slick sheen. Pretty boring, average mass-produced chart fare. Nothing wrong with that in itself, of course. But why are they dressed like a goth metal band? Why do they have a guitar, bass, drums, vocals line-up when none of those instruments feature in their electronically-produced music? I feel so old.

The two Kens are some of the Kenniest Kens this side of Sleeper. They look like they're desperately hoping no-one notices that they're stealing a living by standing behind a goth girl.

Garwoofoo

I looked them up too, albeit not to the point of actually listening to any of their music. The two Kens are called Hugo and Charlie, which sounds about right. Mind you the lead singer is called Heather Baron-Gracie, so clearly a Tory and not actually a goth.

feltmonkey

You should try watching one of their videos on youtube. The massive gulf between the indie-schmindie look of the band and the ultra-slick commercial music is quite disorientating.

dizzy_est_un_oeuf

You should try watching one of their videos on youtube. The massive gulf between the indie-schmindie look of the band and the ultra-slick commercial music is quite disorientating.

They did a thing for BBC Scotland called Tune which is where I first encountered them & quite liked the song (and the video made for decent test material).
Because they're on the comeback trail my phone flagged a recent NME interview. Fuck me, I've never read such a dull piece about a band that nearly died in a bus crash.

cavalcade

They don't really have a lot to say. When better bands like MUNA exist in that sort of mid tier poppy indie segment then what purpose do Pale Waves really serve other than the basis for poor Alastor based references?

cavalcade

I do enjoy the two bewildered lads in the band though. Wondering how they got there, why they're there at all and what their future can possibly hold beyond being blurred in photoshoots and never asked questions by interviewers. If the male Corr is anything to go by then batshit insanity may be the natural end point.

feltmonkey

I reckon I'd love that job. You don't need any skills, it doesn't matter if you can't really play your instrument because it's not audible on the record anyway, you don't even need to be good-looking. The only worry would be the fear that you could be replaced at any time and no-one would notice.

The man-corr is an interesting case though because he seems to have been labouring under the misapprehension that he was of value to the band in some way.

wev

I actually really like Pale Waves, their first album anyway, juries out on the second one (as 1. its not out yet and 2. the singles have been quite different to the first album). Yes, there are far better (and more hipster friendly) female fronted bands out there, but meh, fuck that, I'm beyond trying to be into whatever is cool at the moment.

wev

Also, do we need to have played any of the Atelier games previously or can you jump straight into Atelier Ryza? (the only one I've played was Atelier Iris and that was years and years ago)

Brian Bloodaxe

I think Alastor has made it pretty clear that the only way to play JRPGs is to set an arbitrary date in the not too distant future and play every game in the series before then.

Ninchilla

The only JRPG I've ever finished was FFVII Spoiler - click to showRemake

wev

I think Alastor has made it pretty clear that the only way to play JRPGs is to set an arbitrary date in the not too distant future and play every game in the series before then.

I mean, a few of them are ridiculously long series, but there's quite a few where its mostly core concepts and mechanics that carry between each release. Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Persona, the Tales of … games are mostly all standalone.

I've not thrown my contributions this month into the mix.

Play
Final Fantasy XIV, as ever, haven't done the 5.4 story stuff, or that patches Eden raids, but I did go through all of Alphascape in one sitting with a few others last week and that was a lot of fun.

Final Fantasy IV After seeing the trailer for FFXIV: End Walker and having people mention similarities to FFIV I decided to dust off the PSP and my UMD copy of FFIV The Complete Collection and give it a go, absolutely loving it so far.

Final Fantasy VII Remake Just done the sewer after Wall Market and, honestly, I'm a little cold on this, don't get me wrong, it looks fantastic, and I do like its combat system, but the rest? eh.

Want

Persona 5 Strikers

Alastor