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[Kagus]

Yeah, more politics (which was incredibly opaque if you didn't know how it worked, and then super useful and actually pretty straightforward once you did), and it was actually possible, albeit difficult, to do stuff in secret.

Forbidden Gods took that and not only restricted the availability of agents again, but also made it so that doing almost anything with any of them resulted in "now all of China knows you're here" scenarios.

[axiomsofdominion]

Yeah, more politics (which was incredibly opaque if you didn't know how it worked, and then super useful and actually pretty straightforward once you did), and it was actually possible, albeit difficult, to do stuff in secret.

Forbidden Gods took that and not only restricted the availability of agents again, but also made it so that doing almost anything with any of them resulted in "now all of China knows you're here" scenarios.

Oh the profile-menace system from That Which Sleeps? Did SBtT2 not have that? Haven't played in ages.

[Kagus]

Yeah, more politics (which was incredibly opaque if you didn't know how it worked, and then super useful and actually pretty straightforward once you did), and it was actually possible, albeit difficult, to do stuff in secret.

Forbidden Gods took that and not only restricted the availability of agents again, but also made it so that doing almost anything with any of them resulted in "now all of China knows you're here" scenarios.

Oh the profile-menace system from That Which Sleeps? Did SBtT2 not have that? Haven't played in ages.

Nope. Instead, agents performing most types of tasks would leave behind "evidence" in the hex, which certain enemy agent types could spot and start researching. Once they'd finished researching a piece of evidence, they'd get a negative opinion modifier of the pertinent agent defined by the "evidence strength" of the given evidence. Then they'd usually start beelining towards the nearest lords and spending a few turns presenting this evidence to them, which would in turn make those lords hate your agent the same way. Eventually enough lords would be mad enough at your agent that the nation would banish them from their country, sending troops to attack them and causing attrition damage when inside that country's borders.

...however, there were a number of ways around this. Evidence got "cleaned up" when a particular agent spotted it, meaning that if you killed or corrupted that agent before they could spread the word, their information would die with them. And while creating/converting agents would result in evidence right off the bat, if you could clean up that loose end then the agent could run around completely without suspicion. And there were plenty of useful acts they could perform without generating new evidence.

Additionally, since agents were completely generic and didn't accrue levels/skills, they were more replaceable even if they *did* get too much heat on them... And "too much" in this case meant that they were no longer allowed in any of the nations you wanted to use them in, since suspicion and banishment were tracked individually and were based solely on who the evidence-gathering agents felt they should alert.

This also made The Flesh incredibly useful for subterfuge, interestingly enough... Any hexes the Flesh covered was considered its own nation, and that nation was inherently hostile to all enemy agents. Meaning they'd never investigate locations that required pathing through Flesh-controlled spots, and couldn't chase your agents into those territories.



In Forbidden, back in the beta test, I just got the overpowered one-time vampire lady to show up, handed her the utterly game-breaking rats ability, and had her murder people to the point where the heroes were so obsessed with running to die by her hand that they refused to do anything else against my holdings.

[axiomsofdominion]

Yeah, more politics (which was incredibly opaque if you didn't know how it worked, and then super useful and actually pretty straightforward once you did), and it was actually possible, albeit difficult, to do stuff in secret.

Forbidden Gods took that and not only restricted the availability of agents again, but also made it so that doing almost anything with any of them resulted in "now all of China knows you're here" scenarios.

Oh the profile-menace system from That Which Sleeps? Did SBtT2 not have that? Haven't played in ages.

Nope. Instead, agents performing most types of tasks would leave behind "evidence" in the hex, which certain enemy agent types could spot and start researching. Once they'd finished researching a piece of evidence, they'd get a negative opinion modifier of the pertinent agent defined by the "evidence strength" of the given evidence. Then they'd usually start beelining towards the nearest lords and spending a few turns presenting this evidence to them, which would in turn make those lords hate your agent the same way. Eventually enough lords would be mad enough at your agent that the nation would banish them from their country, sending troops to attack them and causing attrition damage when inside that country's borders.

...however, there were a number of ways around this. Evidence got "cleaned up" when a particular agent spotted it, meaning that if you killed or corrupted that agent before they could spread the word, their information would die with them. And while creating/converting agents would result in evidence right off the bat, if you could clean up that loose end then the agent could run around completely without suspicion. And there were plenty of useful acts they could perform without generating new evidence.

Additionally, since agents were completely generic and didn't accrue levels/skills, they were more replaceable even if they *did* get too much heat on them... And "too much" in this case meant that they were no longer allowed in any of the nations you wanted to use them in, since suspicion and banishment were tracked individually and were based solely on who the evidence-gathering agents felt they should alert.

This also made The Flesh incredibly useful for subterfuge, interestingly enough... Any hexes the Flesh covered was considered its own nation, and that nation was inherently hostile to all enemy agents. Meaning they'd never investigate locations that required pathing through Flesh-controlled spots, and couldn't chase your agents into those territories.



In Forbidden, back in the beta test, I just got the overpowered one-time vampire lady to show up, handed her the utterly game-breaking rats ability, and had her murder people to the point where the heroes were so obsessed with running to die by her hand that they refused to do anything else against my holdings.

The Baroness is still strong but sounds like she got the nerf bat since you played.

I'm not a huge fan of profile/menace. I wonder why he changed it to a less engaging system.

Have you read the Axioms thread regarding intrigue?

[Kagus]

Yeah, before when summoning the Baroness, one of the abilities you could give her would fill any vacant henchman slots with 1/1 rats whenever starting combat. This ability singlehandedly broke the game and made her unkillable if you played with even the slightest amount of caution.

I'm not a huge fan of profile/menace. I wonder why he changed it to a less engaging system.

I believe it was a combination of wanting to try something new, and elements of the community being firmly against the previous system and wanting something else like this. This was a discussion that cropped up numerous times on the Discord, with some occasionally very deep lines being drawn in the sand between members.

And no, haven't seen anything about Axioms, I usually only haunt the same 4-5 threads here nowadays

[axiomsofdominion]

Yeah, before when summoning the Baroness, one of the abilities you could give her would fill any vacant henchman slots with 1/1 rats whenever starting combat. This ability singlehandedly broke the game and made her unkillable if you played with even the slightest amount of caution.

I'm not a huge fan of profile/menace. I wonder why he changed it to a less engaging system.

I believe it was a combination of wanting to try something new, and elements of the community being firmly against the previous system and wanting something else like this. This was a discussion that cropped up numerous times on the Discord, with some occasionally very deep lines being drawn in the sand between members.

And no, haven't seen anything about Axioms, I usually only haunt the same 4-5 threads here nowadays

The Axioms thread is still on the front page. Barely. Gotta write an update soon. Basically fantasy Map&Menu game with focus on [ D ] [ I ] [ P ], [ D ]iplomacy(foreign affairs), [ I ]ntrigue(shadowy affairs), and [ P ]olitics(domestic affairs). Heavily social simulation driven layer on top of a detail strategy layer.

[Frumple]

[D][I][P]

You'll want the nobbc tag when doing that particular thing, probably, otherwise the I catches the italics thing and makes your post look funny :V

or just use paren instead of brackets, that works too

[scriver]

Speaking of demos on steam's demo thing right now: Remember Hard West, the game that was pretty much the Weird West rpg in all but name and mechanics from a few years ago? It's got a sequel on the demo thing right now, called Hard West 2.

It's pretty good. Unlike Hard West's slow rampup in supernatural stuff this one goes whole hog Demons on a Ghost Train in the very first mission, though. That's a bad sad, I really liked the slow pace in the first game.

[Robsoie]

Gave a try to gog freebie "Beautiful Desolation" after noticing the fallout-like screenshot along with some people mentionning fallout.
After reaching the main menu that look very fallout like, even with the green font.
Started the game, visual look very good, similar point of view as in Fallout 1/2 , that is quite nice, all of that to say that  i was eagerly expecting a Fallout 1/2 - like.

But after a minute, it's not that at all, it's not a Fallout-like as it turns out that Beautiful Desolation is in fact a point&click game : with the same type of gameplay as the other games in this genre : find an item in the available location, find where to use it or how/where to combine it, repeat until you can progress more and move to next location .

With the main difference with other point&click games i have played is that the items and where to use them are highlighted so there should be less head scratching.
Story so far is intriguing, but disapointed that even if it's a good one (and it is) it's only a point&click game :/

[Frumple]

Yeah, the game's store page or whatever makes it exceedingly clear it's not a fallout style RPG or anything. Just a point&click/puzzle one with fallout aesthetics.

[Robsoie]

Though don't take my disapointment for this not being the Fallout 1/2-like i thought for it being a mediocre game, the game despite being a point&click is very good and full of surprises.
But it takes a lot out of Fallout when it comes to the interface

edit : some of the character design is rather wild

Spoiler: Mina (click to show/hide)

[Robsoie]

I had been slowly progressing with Shantae and the Pirate's Curse since gog had it as a freebie.
And i had a lot of fun with this platformer/metroidvania game, the sprite artstyle is very well done and make things looking deceptively (because you'll miss a platform and die if you don't focus) joyous .
Excepted when characters talk to each other as by then they use a very different "generic anime-like" artwork than the sprites that to me is unfortunately not as good as them (those sprites all have a very lot of personnality in comparison), though it's a matter of taste i guess.

The level design was nice up to the couple of last islands in which it felt they took much less time to create them . The last one, that is air themed, is very noticably taking a huge dive in term of design especially the background, just nothing, some spike and chains you float around, then nothing much , then a couple of platforms, etc ...", but up to then it was visually very "agreeable".

In term of difficulty, it was very well done, there are some spots with a minor difficulty spike but fortunately they're short and once you're through you're good and with some of the new items you find it's fun coming back to a level and trying to get into previously unavailable/unreachable zones.
It's much closer to the difficulty curve of Mario 3 than Mario Lost Levels if you know what i mean.

But that is until you complete all the islands and then go after the final boss.
And the stage leading to that boss ... oh wow ... it's not a difficulty spike they decided to do, but make the whole very long levels as huge difficulty mountains with teeths made out of difficulty spikes . Yeah, there you go from a game that was overall on a Mario 3 difficulty spike right into Mario Lost Level worst stuff of nightmare.

Fortunately each 2 levels of that last stage you can enable a shortcut (so if you fail or things get on your nerves enough to stop playing you can skip those 2 levels you completed) but that's already super hard to complete those 2 levels on a row .

After completing the 3rd level of that stage and starting to want to throw my monitor through the window in the 4th level , i decided it was time to give up, as after checking a video to see if i was not just playing the whole thing wrong, i noticed there were much more of this kind of level to go through before completing that stage and reaching the boss ... then i thought maybe i would have actually more fun playing something i would actually enjoy ? Just maybe i'm not masochist enough for this last stage ?

Too bad for me for this last stage made of frustration built over frustration, it's like the guy that designed the whole game was fired and replaced by some insane designer just at the end because up to there it was a very fun metroidvania.

[MCreeper]

Witch's Heart. I didn't slander (recommend) and curse (praise) this thing i played half a year ago there yet, did i? I will now.    (Ah yes, i did, but in anime thread)
A very solid RPGmaker piece that really overstays it's welcome. Like, a lot. It was inspired by Umineko a lot, so it carried over the main Umineko's schtick - wateryness. Characters are repeating things over and over again and there are loads of empty prattling. Half of the game is just fetch quests that are almost completely disconnected from main story (and dear god, screw that fishing minigame). Many dialogues are unscippable for "dramatic effect". Even without those story would quite drag on. There are four lenghty loops, then long awaited bonus chapter... that doesn't really tell anything new. Boo. And then there is happy end of the same size - one, but there should have been four.
Story itself is fine, but nothing special. Graphics are fine, but nothing special, except sheer quantity of character images. Music is fine, but nothing special, except again, sheer quantity. Overall, the game, rather uniquely for this genre, took quantity over quality. But if you ever wanted an RPGmaker "horror" the size of a long visual novel... 
EDIT: Words in brackets on top of the post are mostly an unrelated joke about myself. Even when i try to praise a thing, it often comes out as a long list of flaws that probably leaves the reader scratching his head about why i would even recommend it. Not this time, though. Only really praise-worthy thing there, i feel, is Ashe in his own chapter. Finally, for once, a clown that is consistently funny instead of annoying!

[Robsoie]

Finally completed "Wolfenstein: The New Order"

And wow, it's hard to understand how can a game be that good and that crap at the same time, it's incredible.

Spoiler:   own review (click to show/hide)

First things first : the gameplay, the levels and the action, that's the really good part, it's truly top notch, weapons feel strong, environment are very varied (you even go fight nazis on the moon at some point ), lots of enemies type (some robots) and the stealth isn't bad (though a bit too easy i would say) .
 
Though on the visual design, they're too "busy", as with so much equipment the nazis enemies do not really look like nazi anymore with all those super modern/armor stuff they're wearing, even in the first level that still takes place in ww2 era they're not really looking like nazis but like some modern star war troopers.

The fun stuff is that despite that version of Wolfenstein is in a different universe than the past Wolfenstein (in The New Order, the main character failed to kill the old Wolfenstein mecha Hitler), they tried to model the main character to still look like the old BJ one : a big strong ox with very square jaw , nice design.

Now that's for the good, let's go for the super crap.

Apparently someone at the company that developed that game thought " we need to make the main character relatable " , because apparently playing a soldier shooting at nazis wasn't "relatable" enough for those guys, but ok that could make for a very different type of story than previous Wolfenstein universe instead of a repeat, so why not.

So what did they do to make the main character "relatable" :

- tons of cutscenes in which you're not anymore in the main character position, you're only a spectator to whatever he does, i think it was a bad idea to put a distance between him and the player (despite you're in his body at gameplay) , they should have always kept the 1st person view during those cutscene.

- despite being a big strong ox with squared jaw , that main character can't beat a scrawny old nazi officer in hand to hand fight, i was really laughing when in the concentration camp a forced cutscene suddenly break your stealth and you're fighting a scrawny old officer that beat you down so he can then torture you. The face palm was intense, who wrote that thing ?

- in nearly every cutscene the main character has a completely puzzled look at everyone talking to him, something that would understandable if said talk had to do with the period in which the main character had been in a coma (as he missed a few years and events), but no every small talk will have main character doing a "huh ?" face, is that supposed to be making the guy relatable ? because it's not doing that at all.

- apparently main character is unable to decide or do anything by himself during the action gameplay, he needs someone to tell him what he does, despite it's always 100% obvious what he must do : see that switch in that corridor end right next to the closed door that is the only way to proceed ?
The main character reaction will be something akin to "huh ?" and then fortunately you have the girl power leader that tells him he needs to press that switch, is that supposed to make the main character relatable ? Really ? wow i wish someone had punched the people that thought this was good writing in the face during office meetings.

- a point that gives a bit of replay value is the "choice" you are forced to make on which one of your squad member must die, as it change some cutscenes later. Wouldn't be a problem if it was not those "things must be poignant and forced on the player" situation again, you would think good old BJ would just kill his captors even if he had to cut an arm or throw out his teeth instead of accepting to choose the victim for the sadist nazi, but you can't continue to play if you don't play in the hands of the actual sadist writer of that thing.

- I would gladly skip the incredibly badly inserted "woke" things (because why try to implement things naturally or even correctly) if there was not one specific that was so incredibly bad that you can't seriously watch this and think "that's awesome storytelling and makes your character so relatable" :
In the Resistance hideout there's a "NotJimmy Hendrix" for some reason , he's cosplaying as a resistant but during the whole game he will do actually nothing while the other resistants are losing their live fighting nazis.
At some point, despite doing nothing he has a dialogue with the main character and tells him that while he's fighting nazis now, back in america in his time for black people the white people were the nazis because why not, and then proceed to put in the main character's mouth , against his will, some LSD so once main character is drugged out he becomes completely awed by NotJimmy guitar skill.

Because of course drugging other people is perfectly ok to make them think you're as good as Hendrix with a guitar.

- because lonely heroes in the sunset aren't relatable enough for whoever wrote that script, they of course had to give the main character a love interest out of killing nazis.
No problem with that, it does not add anything relatable or repulsive, that's just making a different story. Though there are cutscene in which you're spectator of main character and his love interest having sex because i guess  making the player an external voyeur makes things relatable...

But whatever at some point, and man i really want to know why this popped up in the deranged brain of whoever wrote that crap, your lover that was working as a nurse in a sanitarium before is tasked to the resistance radio .
And she uses that time to regularly contact you through the radio to read you the private thoughts her "cousin" wrote on her diary, while you're busy killing nazis and trying to not get killed.
Except that you quickly understand that the cousin does not exist, but she's reading her own diary.
Wouldn't be so weird if during that diary she wasn't just explaining to you that she hates nazis so much that she went full serial killer on them, seducing and having sex a lot with nazis before killing them, she even describe how some nazi sperm drip off her vagina (yeah, "relatable" subteltly i guess) .
And how she basically only got in love with you because you were a strong lummox with squared jaw and so by being with you she would use your strength to kill more nazis.

Man, seriously.
"Relatable" ?

So in conclusion, you have a masterpiece of FPS linear gameplay , that is really good, but sadly features one of the worst crap of "relatable" storytelling

[Chiefwaffles]

snip

I… really have to ask. Why the strange assumption that every story beat was done with the sole intention of making characters relatable?