I do wish there was an easier way to remember what stuff is weak to what though, some enemies will take single digit damage if you don't know what your doing
Is that the elemental resistance stuff? Yeah, I don't even know what the little icons mean (I can just about remember the orange one means Fire), let alone what's weak to what. I just cycle through each of my spells and pick the one that shows the most damage.
I'm much earlier in the game than you (still on chapter 1) and I've already made the rookie mistake of trying to take on that necromancer way earlier than I should have done. I think my next battle is the notorious early one where you have to protect a new character who immediately runs towards the enemy and suicides before you can even reach her. I wonder if they've tweaked it at all.
My biggest disappointment is that they haven't changed the shop interface. Trying to work out what to buy for 15+ characters is a nightmare, I always just end up guessing and buying stuff I don't need. Literally every other game has solved this problem just by showing you the characters' stats on the screen when you're picking your item, it could so easily have been done here.
Do Skills just unlock as you level each character now?
Additional PLAY:
Ghost Story - Free on Game Pass, it's another of those 'Metroidvania, but it's unfairly hard at times' games that are so en vogue in recent years. It's fine. I'll finish it, I'm sure, but the mix of slightly sanctimonious self-discovery storytelling in a world of literal self-discovery is a bit meh. Also, did I mention it seems unfairly hard at times? Because it is. Also, the insistence that you search for key items marked on the map that are miles away from the main base, which you then can't fast travel with when you get them, is crappy. But hey! I'm enjoying it for the time being.
I'm finding A Plague Tale: Requiem increasingly hard going. My play sessions are getting more infrequent and I am playing it less. Sometimes I enjoy it - and it clearly is a very good game - but other times I find myself swearing at it and turning it off in a huff.
It has two problems I think. Firstly, it is unremittingly grim. It is just a succession of really horrible things happening to children. There's never any sense that you're going to win, or you're getting stronger, you just stumble from one desperate situation to the next. Even the lighter moments of respite feel like just an interlude before things go bad again (and the characters even comment on this). It's nasty.
Secondly, it's a bunch of disparate game styles jammed together, and I only like some of them. I like wandering around and exploring the environments, this game has some incredible sights to see and the companions you pick up along the way have an abundance of character. I like the clever puzzles where you have to use light and shadow and your alchemical concoctions to manipulate the rats. I really don't like the forced stealth sections where you have to pick your way through guards and one mistake means instant death and a retry. And I absolutely despise the combat arenas it occasionally forces you into where you have to fight off waves of enemies in a game engine that absolutely wasn't designed for that sort of nonsense. So really I only like about half the game, and as it goes on and gets more and more difficult and more and more grim, the bits I don't like seem to be increasing in frequency. Bah.
I'm getting very into LOTRO right now though, a game that rewards exploration like no other. I've been pootling around the Misty Mountains for a few days now and stumbled across an entrance to Goblin Town almost at random. It's absolutely massive, and I nearly missed it completely. Now I'm obsessed with seeing if Gollum's cave is in there somewhere. I'm certain it will be.
Sounds like you should give up on Plague Tale. No harm in it, not like you bought it. Far better things to be doing with your time. And if you want to see how the story plays out, someone's bound to have posted it on YouTube.
Do Skills just unlock as you level each character now?
Yeah, that seems to be the case, Finishing Moves at lv10 of a weapon skill too.
Sounds like you should give up on Plague Tale. No harm in it, not like you bought it. Far better things to be doing with your time. And if you want to see how the story plays out, someone's bound to have posted it on YouTube.
I've dropped the difficulty down to Easy and I'm finding it a much better balanced experience. It's called Narrative difficulty which suggests it should be a walk in the park but it's not that at all, it's still fairly challenging - however the really frustrating sections with all the guards are toned down a bit, you get more resources to play around with and your companions are a bit quicker to chip in with suggestions when you get stuck. It feels like this should have been the normal mode, to be honest, it's a much more enjoyable experience. Wish I'd done this earlier.
Pokemon Violet
I am not far despite playing for a few hours but my overall thoughts are positive but with a few unfortunate drawbacks and one thing I'm pretty worried about. The new Pokemon so far are great and that's obviously pretty important, the first part of the open world whilst feeling rough on a technical level really does feel like a next step in what Sword and Shield started and Arceus improved. After the leash is removed very early on you can go on a massive sidetrack and not even reach the first town or the school until you have like 20 Pokemon and a full team of level 15s.
Game somehow looks and performs better and worse than Arceus did, sometimes people in the foreground will be walking smooth as butter while at the same time a person in the background will be walking at what looks like single digit fps, at a distance some structures look super rough. People blame the Switch hardware again but I'm not so sure, maybe this should have been delayed to a year that wasn't the same one Arceus was released in TBQH.
Speaking of Arceus, it was inevitable but but I'm still sad they rolled back some of the new features that game added, like how you can sneak up on Pokemon, use bait and catch them from the long grass with a manually aimed Pokeball. It was one of the coolest parts of the game, and felt like a good way to do QoL whilst also just feeling really great unlike, and I will probably be in a minority here, the combined force of mandatory EXP Share and Auto-Battle effectiely making the game play itself.
That's my main worry so far, the open world stuff is great but man you are going to be super overlevelled if you're not careful. As far as I know you can tackle any Gym in any order but they're not scaled? So I dunno why you would level up enough to beat one Gym out of order, or two, only to come back to the first one and just crush it other than to say you just could. I know some people don't care and that's valid and also that this complaint is boomer tier at this point but I think they can…chill out a bit on the difficulty? I think it's insane that I've almost evolved my first Starter Pokemon and I haven't even entered the main area of the game. Some games you don't care about balance but Pokemon isn't one of those games for me and also I was a wee lad when I played Red and Blue so 'this is a game for kids' isn't an excuse imo.
Don't want to end my thoughts on doom and gloom so I will just say so far I am really enjoying it and with competitve PvP back it probably will edge out Arceus as the best Pokemon game? Maybe?
Dead Space 3
The last one of the series to finish off. I've only just started playing but what's going on? I'm taking cover while shooting people with guns now? When did this turn into Gears of war.
Pokemon just started three separate questlines, 'hunt the Titans', 'Huntthe Team Star leaders' and 'Beat the Gym Leaders' all spread out over the gameworld and said 'do this in any order you want'.
…I'm pretty hyped and very impressed
EDIT - Ok yeah this mogs Sword and Shield pretty hard and probably clears Arceus too, still a lot of issues with the game but they seem to have smashed the open world concept for sure.
Imagine if it looked and ran like Xenoblade 3 or Breath of the Wild.
I know Nintendo don't need to get involved because it's going to sell regardless, but they really need to get an outside party involved in the next game's development.
That and also not rush the next one out the door for seemingly no reason, they literally just did gangbusters with Arceus this year already I don't understand why we had to have this game now when it clearly needed more time in the oven. I couldn't even walk around the school without people popping in and out view a few feet away and not so much moving at a jerky single digit framerate but rather skipping several animation frames altogether. Considering how big this franchise is it's kinda…embarrassing honestly.
DOK PLAYS ANCIENT GAMES VOLUME MXCLVIII
Play - so I bought this, Gold Box Classics, games I once had on old, forgotten platforms and on inaccessible media and have been lost to time. Lots of fun, some are bogged down by a bit of story but the fun part is that even the worst story-bogged PC games of the old days look like all action, no fluff compared to many things these days, for some reason…
Many of them aren't very accessible to many gamers these days because of some awkward gameplay, but I honestly think people can still have a lot of fun with the Eye of the Beholder series since it's very straightforward and easy to play.
I always wanted to play EotB as a kid, but never had anything that would run it.
Bin Marvel Snap - It was fine for a while, but everyone seems to have much better or more interesting cards than me and the rate of gain has slowed right down. I've had some good fun with it, but I think I'm done with it now in any meaningful sense.
Not had much time for Tactics Ogre recently so I've had to go for commute powered Final Fantasy Tactics for my strategy RPG fix for now, will play TO when my shift ends. My God though, Final Fantasy Tactics, absolute fucking 
. I levelled Ramza up through Squire (Squire is kinda shit usually and everyone starts off as it, but Ramza's is pretty good) to nab some sklills like JP point boost then went through Knight to learn 'Equip Heavy Armour' then went to Monk and now I'm a Monk who punches people while wearing armour with the self buffs from Squire, this is the power and flexibility of FFT's 'Job System'. I wanna' say best version of the Job System in the series but I want to play around with FFXI's first, which may or may not end up being as unrestrained but more meaningful?
Also the story is probably the best Matsuno style story? I might need to play XII again but this one is like XII but not as dense and full of more hard hitting scenes, like when Delita realises he's just killing people who just want to survive but are treated like shit because they're not of noble blood. It's basically just a prologue chapter after the actual prologue but the conflict between the aristocracy and the rebels is simple but it works as something that completely spirals out of control into something much greater later on when a certain character goes on a mission, and what that means to Ramza who of one of the most revered houses in the Kingdom but empathises with people.
I always wanted to play EotB as a kid, but never had anything that would run it.
In addition to the original DOS game, there was a great SNES version. Then there was a Sega CD / Mega CD version with a wild OST, particularly the main dungeon level's music (track 6 from the link).
I had EotB but never played it much. I did, however, go a bit mad on Dungeon Master, Captive and Hired Guns (all on the Amiga). Never finished any of them, but I remember Captive being fucking epic.
Enjoyed all of those (especially Eye of the Beholder), also on the Amiga, but the original Bard's Tale trilogy was where it was at. I got through SO much graph paper.
I always wanted to play EotB as a kid, but never had anything that would run it.
In addition to the original DOS game, there was a great SNES version. Then there was a Sega CD / Mega CD version with a wild OST, particularly the main dungeon level's music (track 6 from the link).
I never knew there was a SNES version! I could have had that!
The c64 version of EotB just showed up in my Twitter feed: https://csdb.dk/release/?id=226060
Play:
Monster Train. Jumped on this because of the positive chat on here and it's great, isn't it? I've only had five or six runs so far, and I have basically no idea what's happening - there are so many synergies at play. I managed to almost beat Seraph on my first two runs, but cocked up unit placement on my last go. Overwhelmed, but I'm having fun.
Battlefield 2042. I remember this getting shat on upon release, but it's on Game Pass now and holy crap it's incredible. Battlefield refined to the nth degree. I have a quiet day WFH tomorrow and I'm planning on spending the whole day on this. It's intoxicating.
Warzone 2. Anyone played DMZ? It's actually brilliant. CoD has done something actually exciting and relevant for the first time in about fifteen years. Enormous map (as in, about twenty Battlefield maps stitched together enormous), 100-odd real players and a load of enemy AI. You drop in with your squad, accept and complete missions, pick up loads of loot, and try to exfiltrare before the AI or another human kills you. It's genuinely amazing, and I'm sure they've copied it from somewhere and this sort of game is old hat by now, but it's the first time I've seen anything like it.
It sounds Tarkov-esque, which would be good. Rancid community and the fact it's shootymans mean I don't think I'd shift from Valorant and Apex (and the occasional bit of Overwatch 2), but I might give it a go.
BIN
Ghost Song - My patience with unnecessarily difficult for the sake of it Metroidvania games is drained. I guess it doesn't help that I just went back to Dead Cells, which is infinitely more accessible and better at making you feel empowered, while also being damn tough. Git gud? Get fucked. In the bin.
I'm not sure what the surprise is.
Regretfully I am going to bin Tactics Ogre: Reborn, for now at least.
It's still a good game and it's been given a thoughtful remaster, it retains the look and feel of the original and has been sensibly rebalanced in all the ways that matter. But it has a couple of issues:
1) It's slooooow. With up to 12 characters on each side, even the most basic battles can take upward of half an hour. Ten minutes of that is each side slowly shuffling towards each other. Everything turns into a war of attrition, you slowly knock down the enemy's health while they do the same to you and the person left standing is the winner. It fits with the game's themes - it's quite a grim depiction of war, with bodies everywhere and there are no power fantasies here - but it is very, very plodding at times. And it's not the only bit that's slow…
2) The one bit of the game that needed fixing but has barely been touched is the management of your squad. There's no easy way to tell who's gained new skills recently so you have to go through each team member individually and work out which little icons are new. The shop interface is a nightmare and it's really hard to tell who needs new equipment without constantly flicking backwards and forwards between the shop and the character screen, and the crafting system is even more complicated than that. It means the very long battles are interspersed with very long squad management sections, but at least the battles are fun - this stuff is just unnecessarily frustrating. I never feel like I've optimised things properly.
It's a shame because a lot of what the game does is still best in class but the return on your time invested is very low. On the SNES and the PSP that was easier to overlook, somehow, but on a machine like the Switch that has everything from XCOM 2 to Mario & Rabbids, there are many turn-based strategy options that provide more bang for your buck. Tactics Ogre is showing its age, I guess, just in terms of pacing.
Maybe one day I'll come back to it and be more in the mood, but for now it just feels like a bit too much work.
Sounds like a good one to lose yourself in over a cozy indoor winter holiday.
Yes, exactly.
The pacing didn't bother me when I played through the PSP game but thinking back I probably played 99% of that on my commute, which must have helped.
Additional Play
Shinsekai: Into the Depths on the Switch - picked this up a while ago, but have only just got round to giving it a go. It's an underwater metroidvania, you're a diver who's underwater home gets frozen (?) at the start and you have to swim away and figure out what's going on. The setup isn't amazing, but the feel of moving the little person around in the sea, whether walking or with thrusters, is absolutely perfect - it's been a while since I've played something that felt so physical, so immersive in a purely tactile way. The sound helps too, full of bubbling and troubling clanks - adding headphones into the mix just makes it even better. The game itself is pretty standard exploration/upgrade stuff, perfectly competent and enjoyable so far without any surprises, but I'll keep going just for the feel of being miles down and miles away.
Additional Want
I've noticed that LoZ: Skyward Sword HD is in the eshop sale - anyone played it? It's the only mainline Zelda I've never played, so thinking of picking it up. How do the controls work on the pad? Worth a bash for someone who is distinctly anti-waggle?
I've noticed that LoZ: Skyward Sword HD is in the eshop sale - anyone played it? It's the only mainline Zelda I've never played, so thinking of picking it up. How do the controls work on the pad? Worth a bash for someone who is distinctly anti-waggle?
I've only played the Wii version but I'd say it's a mediocre Zelda game that's lifted a little on that machine by its innovative motion controls. Take those out of the equation and it's probably going to be worse.
It's not a terrible game exactly but it's very repetitive - you go back to the same three environments over and over, fight the exact same boss over and over, and so on. Not worth full price in this day and age and probably not worth it at the standard 33% eShop discount either.
The controls on the Switch version using non-waggle are fine. It's a decent Zelda but certainly not the best.
Thank you! That's saved me 30 odd quid :)
Yeah the battles in Tactics Ogre do take a fair amount of time, imo it's not just the movement of every single participant but also the tankiness in TO is way different to FFT in which people will die in a few hits or even one in some cases. In TO you better use the right weapon type on the right type of armour and Fear and maybe even Breach the target (If you don't bring Dragoons to a party of Monsters, good luck) if you want to kill them quickly.
This makes it a lot less chaotic, by chaotic I mean in the sense that my Ramza right now uses fucking Geomancy, he attacks with the power of water, grass and sand depending on where he stands. It will eventually become as easy as I want it to be but I think TO will always be a more strategic affair, at least so far it is, but it does make things die longer and bosses in this game are like damn cockroaches.
…I will add I recruited Octopi in TO the other day and it's really something rolling them out with a Beast Master and just spitting acid rain everywhere, probably about as out of left field as TO gets?
